French Leave

by Liz Ryan

  Instantly her voice goes into professional keep-calm mode, the languidly casual tone that disguises certainty of imminent death. Oh, she says, probably nothing to worry about … maybe just a teeny, weeny little blood clot, the tiniest touch of thrombosis, most unlikely, but better call a doctor to be on the safe side … an ambulance, perhaps?

  Now, screeches the subtext, quick before you’re unconscious! Alarmed, I dial the emergency service (whose number is not in the phone book – you have to crack the Da Vinci code to get it). After a long interval, a voice answers. The voice listens to my story, and sighs. An exploding leg? Oh, dear. What a shame. The nearest hospital doesn’t have the staff to deal with exploding legs at this hour of night. Instead, the voice will put me on to a doctor who, over the phone, will advise.

  His advice is to ‘Put an ice-pack on the leg. Frozen peas, if you have some. Take an aspirin, go to sleep and, in the morning, see your GP.’

  Whaat? But there will be no morning! An embolism is rushing to my brain! I will be dead before dawn! I need to be helicoptered to hospital right away!

  Ah, well. You see, madame, the thing is, there is no hospital.

  Whaat? But France is one big hospital!

  Alas, non. Not tonight, Josephine. There is no hospital in the entire area capable of doing the necessary tests at this hour.

  But my leg is the size and shape of Italy! It is about to erupt like Vesuvius!

  ‘Oh,’ he says, stifling a yawn, ‘most unlikely. Embolisms take time. Travel very slowly. An aspirin will probably break it up. But see your GP tomorrow anyway, just to be sure. Bonne nuit, madame.’

  Bonne nuit? Is he mad? I am now practically levitating with pain, shuddering with shock. Desperately, I grab the phone again and ring my nearest friendly neighbour. Moments later he is, to his eternal credit, standing in my living room in his pyjamas under an anorak, gazing at my vast twitching leg, incredulous.

  ‘You can’t be serious. They can’t have said that. You must have misunderstood. Let me call them.’

  So he does and, eh oui, the emergency service is desolate. No ambulance, because no hospital is available. The same doctor repeats the same advice: aspirin, and get her to her doc tomorrow. Bye now.

  I am frantic. But nothing can be done. No help is available, in this fabled land of fabulous health care. Not one of its three thousand hospitals can help.

  And so my neighbour departs, wringing his hands, while I take an aspirin and hobble back to bed with my purple, palpitating leg wrapped in a sack of peas. There I prepare to meet my maker. C’est la vie. And now, apparently, c’est la fin.

  Mary calls back. Why am I still at home? Has the ambulance not arrived yet?

  I relate the news. She goes soprano. But this can’t be! Even in Ireland you’d get an ambulance for a bloody thrombosis! My God, this is unbelievable, you must get treatment, you must!

  But I can’t. There is none to be had. Long live France – a lot longer than I am about to, apparently.

  Six hours later, after an extremely detailed examination of the bedroom ceiling, I sit up again, astonished to find that I can. Minutes later, I am panting outside the doctor’s surgery as he arrives for work. Examining the leg, he whistles.

  ‘Ooh, là là!’ Indeed. Sadly, shaking his head, he informs me that I have been the victim of a very naughty, very nasty insect. Whatever it was, it has given me a vicious bite. Yes, the results certainly do resemble all the symptoms of embolism. But not to worry, it isn’t one. I will be well, all will be well. Panic over.

  It took days for me to recover. Not from the bite, which responded to treatment immediately, but from the fright. Such was the residual shock, I considered selling the house and moving next door to the Salpetrière, or whatever might be the biggest, busiest, 24/7 casualty department in Paris.

  Okay, luckily it wasn’t an embolism. But what if it had been?

  Brilliant medical system? Hah! Clearly all the money for staffing overnight emergency departments has been used up by the battalions of mothers with their fifty zillion prescriptions for flu remedies.

  Or maybe you just have to be French? Recently, a speeding biker came off his bike on the corkscrew hill that spirals down into our village. Very nasty injuries. Arriving instantly, the police stopped traffic for nearly ten minutes until not one but two ambulances came screeching up, amidst enough blue lights to illuminate Versailles, and whipped him off to hospital. I wouldn’t have been in the least surprised to see an army helicopter hovering into view.

  Mind you, it happened in the early evening. Good thing it wasn’t midday, or he might have had to wait until the emergency crews had finished their lunch.

  A local lady has just died, aged a hundred and four. To the very end, she was in the best of shape, cheery and chatty, mentally alert, scarcely even needing spectacles. Was it her famously positive attitude that kept her so well? Or the fabulous food? Clean air? Superb health care? Daily glass of red wine?

  Idly speculating, I’m mulling on this with a friend on the Irish end of the phone. A friend whose view it is that ‘France doesn’t pull its weight in Europe. Thirty-five-hour week, ha! The French are a bunch of incompetent layabouts.’ Hearing about the centenagarian lady, he snorts. ‘You have to bear in mind that the French use up hardly any mental or physical energy at all. Being a hundred and four in France is equivalent to being thirty-four anywhere else.’

  Oh, so cruel! But if there is a grain of truth in it, maybe the French are right? While keeling over from a stress-induced heart attack might impress your boss, there’s not much else to be gained from it. And besides, if it happened at night, you could be a long time waiting for your defibrillator. Keep a packet of aspirin handy, just in case, plus a bag of frozen peas.

  And brace yourself for the imminent arrival of your eighty-eight-year-old mother, who’s recently heard of Jeanne Calment, a Frenchwoman who famously lived to be a hundred and twenty-two, and decided on the strength of this information that France is the perfect place in which to live out one’s old age. No, really, there is no point in ever bothering to go home again!

  13.

  Party Time

  Okay, it’s not the Irish idea of a party. Nobody goes to the pub first, nobody knocks back a dozen tequila slammers, nobody throws up, swings a punch or burns down the barn. Nobody even arrives late. But a French party can be a riot, if you hang in long enough. Or if you’re let in: how was I to know, arriving at my very first party with a beautiful bouquet of golden chrysanthemums, that in France these flowers are reserved for 1 November, to be placed on the graves of the dearly departed? Presenting them to your hostess is akin to saying you wish her dead – not the ideal kick-off to festivities.

  However, I didn’t know this. I just knew that I wanted to have some fun. So I got dressed up to kill (which in Normandy often just means clean dungarees), and arrived at the party all willing and ready to rave, tragically clutching my doomed chrysanthemums.

  First, however, prior to any fun, there are the kisses of greeting to negotiate. Stereotyped cartoons of these are not in the least exaggerated. Every new arrival at every gathering must kiss everyone already in the room – which can make it an exquisitely long night. Beginners should know that starting on the left cheek eliminates that gruesome danse macabre whereby one or both noses get broken, but even after years of taking aim, it remains a challenge, kind of like Olympic-level archery.

  Next, the delicate question of quantity. It’s not true that French kisses are unbridled. The number allocated increases according to how well you know the kissee; one too few subtly suggests your loathing of him or her, while one too many can convey your intention of bedding him or her before the night is out – rather a startling prospect if you’ve never even met before (unless, of course, you’re an Irish teenager). Two kisses are good – unless you’re family or close friends, in which case two will indicate that the kissee is, after all, to be struck out of your will. Two are the minimum, and four is the limit – but to be judiciousl
y bestowed, lest you be mistaken for the town bike. Ideally, no body parts should touch: your aim is merely to brush the air beside the proffered cheek. In mixed company, it is the woman who proffers, and the man who kisses.

  Next, what do you call the person you’re kissing? French formality is such that many in-laws call each other ‘monsieur’ or ‘madame’ for years, for decades, beyond the grave. In very swish circles, spouses even do. It’s a tricky conundrum, especially when addressing women. Married or single, a French ‘mademoiselle’ generally becomes ‘madame’ after the age of twenty-five, but guessing her age can be a minefield for amateurs. Get it wrong and … well, you won’t actually be deported, but you won’t be going to many more parties either. Annoyingly, it’s not difficult for the French themselves, who are born with some kind of radar that can read every woman’s date of birth on her forehead, as accurately as a laser scanning a barcode.

  So far, so good. You have apologised for the chrysanthemums, bestowed the correct number of kisses on each of the twenty or thirty people in the room, and negotiated their titles. But now the nightmare really kicks in. To call them vous, or tu? Both mean ‘you’, but vous is formal and tu is for friends. As a teenaged au pair, I once inadvertently addressed the kids’ grandmother as tu: the reaction could hardly have been more explosive had I embedded a machete in her head. Now I always say vous when in doubt, waiting to hear what they call me. (‘That sad immigrant ignoramus’, I suspect, although it’s never audible.) Rumour has it that Jacques Chirac never dared call his formidable wife Bernadette anything other than vous, and most Frenchmen reckon that his discretion was the better part of valour.

  Okay, you’ve got the hang of it. Nobody seems to be ringing the embassy to request your removal? Great. Proceed to the next stage: aperitifs and canapés. Do not expect to be offered a pint. Do not expect Tayto. Do not say ‘Jaysus, I could murder a single of chips.’ Do not, under any circumstances, express sympathy for an American president or a British prime minister. If your small talk seems to be eliciting no reaction, don’t panic: the French are quite capable of gazing silently over your shoulder at the wall for ten minutes without meaning any offence. Most of them simply resent the fate that has inexplicably cast them in the role of bank clerks or sales reps, when clearly they were meant to be film directors. Silence actually indicates profound reflection on what you have just said, even if it happens to be ‘our postman’s goldfish died yesterday’. In France, death is no matter for mirth.

  After a brief interval – no more than two or three hours – the party will start to warm up. People may utter two or even three consecutive sentences. Not, of course, that any of these sentences will concern you, since the French are not remotely interested in the foreigners who flit through their lives. Nobody will ask why you’re in France, what you do, how’s it going, or is it true about Biffo getting Taoiseached? Nobody’s really sure whether Ireland sort of runs into Iceland, or Holland. At most, you might be politely asked how your dear queen is doing – as if you knew David Norris, or cared!

  And now – now, à table! Dinner is served, let us all sit down. The word ‘dinner’ is the most electric in the French language. Within seconds, every guest will be eagerly seated, nakedly inspecting the arriving trays of wonderful food. Yes, it is wonderful. It is not only ceremonial but an ongoing contest, and God help the hostess whose paper-fine rosbif is not perfectly pink. This is where the fun part of the evening starts. You will be just tucking into your divine prawns or palm hearts or … oh really, it’s time to get up again? The French watch their figures like hawks, and so at a party each course is worked off with a hectic spate of dancing before the next. Fabulous dancers all, they will not tolerate or even believe your mumblings about not knowing how to waltz, rumba or foxtrot, and you will curse your parents for not having sent you to Billie Barry when you were five. Or curse yourself, for having clung to the bedpost and threatened matricide if you were made to go.

  Three or four hours later, the meal is over and everyone’s having a grand old time. That man in the corner, the one you thought was in a coma, may actually have attempted a joke. Young Yvette may have stopped counting the calories in her Perrier. And – a sign of real acceptance, this – Madame may have tipped you off as to where to find the skin cream that will give you a complexion like hers. Well, almost like hers. One must try, chérie.

  Eh oui, despite their surface gloom – or perhaps because of it – the French love to party. They put weeks of organisation into it, and it shows. Not for them the sausage sticks, the cans from the off-licence and the casual ‘Hey, let’s all go round to Fred’s flat’. Dare to throw a party of your own, and not only will they all turn up toting beautifully wrapped gifts, they will turn up on time, with game plans, on the dot. This is a terrifying experience for the unwary and, especially, for the Irish. On the plus side, they’ll all leave on the dot too, with no danger of you excavating a snoring Sebastien from your hydrangeas three days later. Three days later, the thank-you cards will be rolling in: Merci, merci bien, it was magnifique! And now, you must come to us …

  You will come. Just as soon as you’ve sorted your tus from your vous and learned how to dance a killer tango. On my first St Patrick’s Day, a Sunday, I bravely hosted un petit drinks party. Amongst the guests was a local florist. Arriving in a suit buttoned up to the neck, she gazed in horror as a drink was offered. ‘What? At four o’clock? In the daytime?’

  Nothing would induce her to taste the punch. Which was a pity, because everyone else loved it, never suspecting that alcohol lurked amidst the fruit juices. It simply never crossed their minds that, on a Sunday afternoon, ‘drinks’ might actually mean drinks.

  But it did. Oh yes, oh ho, it certainly did. Not that I set out to sabotage anyone: it simply never occurred to me to make punch without alcohol, and it never occurred to them that I’d put some in. But it worked wonders. At ten that night, I was obliged to tactfully suggest to the stragglers that perhaps nine renditions of ‘Whiskey in the Jar’ was enough. That nine whiskeys was perhaps also enough. Yes, I would perfect their pronunciation of all the songs and throw another party soon … one of them was so drunk he completely forgot his list of medical problems in mid-sentence, and another actually called me tu by mistake.

  Which just goes to show how lethal tu much drink can be.

  14.

  Home is Where the Heart is

  ‘So,’ said my Irish pal on the phone, ‘how’s it working out? You’ve been in France for over two years now.’

  Have I? Good grief. It feels more like two months. ‘Yes, it’s good,’ I truthfully tell him. ‘It’s great.’

  And so it is. While I still haven’t met ‘Monsieur Hulot’ (the stereotypical Frenchman who’d so enhance France) the experiment is definitely working. Life is now filled with air and exercise, freedom, interest and stimulus and lovely landscapes, and it has a healthy, happy rhythm. Naturally, quitting one’s job means some belt-tightening (exotic holidays are out the window, and there won’t be a new car for years), but it is, so far, worth it. Living in France is proving rejuvenating, and even on a budget it’s possible to have excellent quality provided you get your priorities straight. No frills, no impulse buys, we won’t be getting a new fitted kitchen … but champagne is affordable and a lot of fun activities are free.

  ‘So when are you coming back?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘For a visit? You must be bored rigid all the same.’

  Eh? Must I?

  ‘Yes. Out there on your windswept plateau with nothing only cows and crops … when are you coming home for a dose of civilisation?’

  Well, yes. Although the promised homesickness had yet to strike, I was now into another winter. Icy, crackling, brrr. French seasons are crystal clear: you know exactly where you stand – or attempt to stand. On my daily walks, I was bowling along in fast-forward, chivvied by the freezing, violent wind which was hurling up huge plumes of surf at the cliffs, pebble-dashing the windscreens of unsuspecti
ng spectators who parked too close to the harbour wall. Once or twice I was almost airborne, heading for Hastings, speechless with the needle-like intensity of the cold. One day, indoors with the heating on, I’d had to wear gloves, a hat, a huge woolly scarf, leggings under trousers and three sweaters, the whole glamorous apparition wrapped in a rug. Maybe, if the planes weren’t all grounded by fog or snow, and French air traffic control wasn’t on its weekly strike, now might be a good moment to visit … home?

  ‘But I am home. Sitting here in my living room talking to you, at home.’

  ‘Duh! You know what I mean! It’s time you came to visit Ireland. Friends and family. We miss you, you know. Hey, did you hear the latest about …?’

  And my pal embarked on the latest Irish gossip, which, like a good beef marmite (not to be confused with Marmite), had been simmering nicely, and was now ready for serving up with a glass of wine. There’s something comforting about well-aged gossip, news that no longer really matters: it illustrates how little of it was ever really important in the first place. You enjoy each tasty morsel, chew it over, have a laugh, and then forget all about it. So we did laugh, and it was heart-warming to hear that I was missed – a possibility that had never crossed my mind when I’d left Ireland. These long chats were getting ever more affordable, thanks to new internet bundles, and plane fares were cheap, too: I could fly to Dublin and back for less than the price of parking at the airport. Sometimes Ryanair even did free tickets, which even after taxes still weighed in at under a hundred euro (although I did notice a sorry decrease in flights to my favourite airport, Shannon). To assuage my assumed mal de pays, friends were still stalwartly sending comfort supplies from Ireland: newspapers, Rolo chocolates, Dubliner cheese (yes, really, to France), fruit gums, rashers, Barry’s tea (mountains of it – I now had, almost literally, all the tea in China). I had a choice of four Irish radio stations, internet access to every Irish website … how could anyone be homesick, in this global village? Nonetheless, I was coming to realise that emigrating further afield – to Oz or New Zealand, say – would have been a very bad idea. I wanted – surprisingly, needed – regular fixes of Ireland. I needed to feel that it was near and sort of on standby, even if nobody there seemed to believe that I was in France by choice, cheerfully enjoying life chez les frogs. Now, invited to visit, I had better be grateful – and be glad I hadn’t gone somewhere too far away to casually pop on a plane to get back, which might have been psychologically disastrous. Unless you’re very young, there’s a lot to be said for only emigrating down the road.