French Leave

by Liz Ryan

  ‘Well, first thing in the morning, we’ve got to hit the hypermarket, of course, get a telly so we can get True Movies, and I’ll just give the office a quick call while Kate does that bit of work on her laptop, and then we can see about putting up those shelves and getting up some curtains and sanding the floorboards, and …’

  Speechless, I stare at him. Did I once live like this? Did I once babble and jabber and live in terror that, if I stopped long enough to draw one extra breath, the entire universe would disintegrate? Soothingly, I try to steer him towards bed (to which Kate literally has to be carried).

  Perplexed, he stares back, and for the first time it strikes me at what very different speeds we now live our lives. To me, Ireland sounds breakneck, while to him France is barely crawling.

  But sure enough, the house shaped up, and on their first bank holiday weekend, Kate and Séamus got terrific mileage out of their new résidence sécondaire. They left Dublin after work on Friday, flew over, rented a car, got lost in the dark, but still reached their cottage just in time for dinner at midnight. On Saturday, they were up with the sun to drive to their favourite shop near Paris, only two hours away, to buy some lamps they wanted for their Dublin residence (after they figured out how to get off the motorway, having driven past the mystery exit 419 times in both directions and all but shot up the Eiffel Tower). Then they drove back. Zipped over to Fécamp to buy some of the oysters they love. Came home to find a note from the electrician, who’d finally arrived to fix the wiring problem. What a pity they were out, said the note when finally deciphered, but not to worry, the electrician had a window in his diary and would return in six months. The gardener had called too, and mysteriously chopped down the pear tree; just a tiny bit of a language muddle, Kate reckoned.

  Kate was cooking dinner for their new neighbours (no, she doesn’t speak French, but you have to try to make friends who’ll watch your property in your absence) when Séamus’s knife slipped on one of the oysters he was opening. Eh oui, a nasty gash, actually.

  His hand was gushing blood and realistically he needed stitches. Would have got them, too, if he’d known how to find a doctor or where the nearest casualty department was, but sadly he hadn’t yet had time to investigate these facilities. As things stood, Kate did a sterling job with a box of Band-Aid and her YSL scarf. Admittedly, the oysters never did get served, but at least Séamus will eventually regain the full use of his hand. And now they know that the French medical emergency number is ‘15’; by the time they next need to use it, they hope to be able to explain why. Yes, French can be a tricky language, especially over the phone when you’re bleeding to death.

  The dinner guests? Well, they were a little disappointed to find Kate administering first aid to her husband, the oysters swimming in blood, the casserole burning forgotten on the hob and the house freezing because of the wiring problem (it affects the heating). But never mind: one of them – Jacques – said that he knows a chap who might be able to do something about the roof. Yes, a few slates blew off it in a recent gale, and a bit of weather damage had been done by the time Séamus and Kate heard about it back in Dublin, but Jacques has assured them that, yes, it can be fixed. All in good time.

  Sunday was a lovely day. Perfect for the beach, particularly since the church bell opposite their house rings on Sundays for a slightly excessive forty minutes. Séamus just needed to mow the lawn first – yes, hopefully the sheep will be coming soon – and Kate just needed to do a bit of laundry, because they’d loaned the house to friends the previous weekend and rather a lot of laundry had accumulated. The friends had had to leave in a hurry, apparently, and didn’t get round to it. Such a hurry, in fact, that one of them knocked over the stereo system with his suitcase on the way out, but never mind, he’s promised to replace it. As was becoming evident, laundry, and breakages, and perpetual lawnmowing are all part of owning a holiday home.

  Mmm, the beach was a bit crowded. And it did take a while to get there, what with that four-kilometre bank-holiday tailback and the pressure on parking spaces. And yes, there was rather a stiff sea breeze, but Séamus was happy about that, since he’s not quite as keen as Kate on scorching sun. Besides, he couldn’t sunbathe comfortably with his hand in that awkward condition. So, rather than join his wife on the sand, he left her stretched out to get her tan while he went for a stroll, and very pleasant it was. Really, it’s so wonderful to have a little place in France, to potter amongst the rock pools and watch the children shrimping! Back to nature and all that.

  When he returned, Kate was fast asleep. Out cold, her novel untouched beside her. How relaxed and comfortable she looked, lying there soaking up the rays. Séamus was quite touched, she looked so sweet and fetching in her designer swimsuit, the prettiest girl on the whole beach.

  Sadly, that evening, poor Kate didn’t look quite so fetching, nor relaxed or comfortable either, because alas she’d got just the tiniest touch of sunstroke. That deceptive breeze had convinced her that it was cooler than was actually the case, and now she couldn’t bring her arms down to touch her sides, nor bear to sit down, because the backs of her thighs were just slightly scorched. This was unfortunate, because they were now facing the two-hour drive back to the airport for their flight home. However, Séamus did his best. Got her a pack of frozen peas to sit on. Slathered her in yogurt, which he’d heard was good for sunburn, even if it did seem a slightly smelly remedy. Put cushions under her arms to support them – apparently it’s very tiring to keep them raised for more than a few minutes – and off they set for the airport.

  Alas, there was rather a lot of traffic making its way home from the beach. All those foreigners! So it took longer than usual to get to the airport, and they were just a tad stressed by the time they got there, but as it turned out they weren’t late for their flight at all. In fact they had plenty of time, after Séamus discovered he’d left the wallet containing his passport back at the house. By the time they’d driven back to get it, and then back to the airport again, the flight had long gone and they were booked on the next, leaving at dawn. In theory, anyway. In reality, it didn’t leave till noon because, well, planes do occasionally go techie, n’est-ce pas? And it could have been worse: they did get nearly an hour’s sleep on the flight, before dashing straight to their offices on touchdown back home. Although it was a bank holiday, a couple of crises had arisen at work, and they had to deal with one each.

  The lamps? No, sadly, they didn’t make it. Apparently, Ryanair wanted a hundred euro excess baggage for them, and Séamus threw a tiny tantrum, and they ended up in a bin at Beauvais. He threw another tantrum later, too, when the car-rental company billed him for petrol he is adamant he put in the car. But yes, apart from that, he and Kate had an absolutely delightful weekend in their French holiday home. They should be back again any day now, assuming the air-traffic controllers call off their threatened strike.

  Meanwhile, so many other francophile friends have been charmed by the tale of the lovely holiday home that I could set up an agency and spend all day, every day, escorting them to see the solicitor – the solicitor who, unknown to us all, is planning to sell his own Normandy home and move down to ‘civilisation’ in Cannes. Before leaving, he imparts an interesting snippet of gossip. Have my friends heard about the planned new autoroute extension near their house, the halting site, and the exciting adventure centre to which thousands of kiddies are to be bussed over the summer holidays?

  ‘Eh oui, isn’t it great to see Normandy livening up! Your friends will have way more fun than they expected.’

  18.

  Wine and Water

  ‘Oh, no. Please, don’t make us go! For God’s sake, not to a herring festival.’

  Why not? Do we have something against herring?

  ‘No, it’s just that we … we’d rather …’

  They’d rather sleep. Bed is the prize all my Irish friends crave when they visit France. More than Paris, more than sunny beaches or divine restaurants, more even than the markets
or wine shelves, they want to go to sleep. Sometimes, they can’t be prised off their pillows for days on end. This lot, unusually, are actually vertical. Coherent. But rebellious.

  ‘I promise you’ll love it. Wrap up warm and off we go.’

  Grumbling, grizzling, they trundle out to the car, muttering vehement anti-herring sentiments under their breath. There surely cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be anything remotely sexy, amusing or even gastronomically alluring about herring?

  It is a blue-bright winter’s day, the sun slicing through swathes of copper trees, the country air carrying a salt tang from the deep Norman harbour of St Valéry, where chalk from the crumbling cliffs has tinted the water an opaque, minty green. (It is this combination of sea and country air, I suspect, that sabotages my visitors, felling them like a scythe.) When we reach St Valéry, the war-ravaged little town is bedecked in flags and, around its high-kicking fountain, a band is assembling, red-cheeked, red-striped, pom-pommed, hoisting a banner proclaiming it to be from Picardie, an hour’s drive east.

  ‘Isn’t it great,’ remarks a white-whiskered, ruddy-cheeked old sea dog who must make his fortune moonlighting as Santa, ‘to see a foreign band coming all this way.’

  One of my friends, whose French is good enough to chisel under the Cauchois accent, giggles and has to be shushed. Another, noticing the girl members of the band changing from flared miniskirts into warmer trousers, snorts with laughter. ‘Glamorous lot, aren’t they. Ha!’

  It has to be admitted that glamour is not high on today’s agenda. Any top designer would surely deny all connection with France if he could see ‘la mode’ – woolly scarves, boots, mittens and bloodstained aprons. Bloodstained aprons are an inescapable feature of the herring festival, enveloping beefy fishermen’s wives as they slap huge crates of the silvery fish onto vast log-fuelled braziers, from which fragrant woodsmoke begins to hiss and curl out over the cliffs.

  ‘My God,’ squeaks one of our party in horror, ‘those fish are alive! They’re being burnt alive!’

  Yes, well, Joan of Arc was too, not far from here in Rouen. Burning things alive goes with the territory. But not all the fish are alive, actually: some are whacked against a handy wall, others swiftly beheaded, before being tossed on the flames. All around us, faces flare with anticipation as the shining fish, mere minutes out of the sea, begin to sizzle and glint on the grills. Begin to give off a delicious aroma, too, as only seafood can when barbecued outdoors on a brisk sunny day, destined for immediate consumption with a coup de vin blanc or a bubbling bowl of local cider. One of our party is eyeing the proceedings thoughtfully and has to be plucked away, casting nostalgic looks over his shoulder as we shuffle on into the surrounding market.

  ‘But breakfast was hours ago. Do we not get any …?’

  No. Not until we’ve seen what else is available. Everywhere, chestnuts are roasting, hopping on more huge black braziers, and around a mobile bread oven an eager crowd has gathered. A team works together: a young Vietnamese man rolling doughballs with the dexterity of a juggler, hurling them onto oiled trays which are seized by a sturdy older woman, who shoves them into the oven and settles them with a thrust of a long wooden paddle. The previous batch is just out, crusty and steaming, some loaves the size and shape of footballs, others looking exactly like the logs on which they have been baked. There is something profoundly, reassuringly timeless about them, about this whole pageant, which might be medieval: the herring history of St Valéry wafts back as far as 1234.

  My friends’ noses begin to twitch, comically and in unison; they look like a bunch of hopeful bunnies. But not yet, not yet.

  ‘What about the smoked oysters?’

  None of them has ever tasted a smoked oyster. Even those who’ve been to the Galway oyster festival haven’t seen so many baskets of oysters whipped from their beds of seaweed, shucked open by a fisherman with the skill of a surgeon. Collectively we hold our breath, waiting for the flying knife to slice his fingers off. But no such fun; he has done this before. The sleek oysters huddle into the flames, shrivelling into silvery pouches that will burst on the tongue, gushing salty juices …

  ‘I’m starving,’ growls one of our group. ‘I want …’

  A sausage, maybe? At the next stall, hundreds of sausages, red and black and cream, dangle from hooks in scarlet nets, some peppered, some wrapped in leaves, others infused with herbs, garlic, apple, mushroom … a little tasting dish is on offer, and fists fly like pistons, emptying it in a flash. The butcher looks both startled and impressed, and I grin guiltily.

  ‘Uh … Irish.’ Well, some explanation of our savagery seems required. ‘We … uh … we’ll take a dozen.’

  Beaming, the vendor scoops sausages into a brown paper sack, handing them over with the enigmatic comment one hears so often: ‘Ah, Irish! Not British, then!’

  Immediately the sack is seized and rifled, but in vain. The thick sturdy skin of the sausages refuses to yield and, possessing no penknife, we are unable to break one into pieces for immediate consumption. This proves remarkably frustrating, igniting rebellion in the ranks.

  ‘We are bloody ravenous. Our stomachs are rattling like castanets. If we don’t get something to eat soon, we’ll …’

  But what about the scallops? What about the pumpkins, the mushrooms fresh in from the forests? Good grief, what about the cheeses?

  The cheeses are stacked to the sky, smelling as if the cows and sheep from which they came are entombed within their rinds. Noses are held, brows wrinkled. ‘Ooh, disgusting!’ Yes, undeniably the pong is strong. But visually this stall is a Renoir, lush with every imaginable colour: gold, copper, caramel, bolts of blue forking through the Morbier, bronze walnuts studding the Noix. Some, made with goats’ milk, are rolled in black ash; others nestle into bundles of leaves or cuddle up on beds of straw. The wheels of Comté are the size of tractor tyres. Again, samples are offered, and demolished at the speed of light. And suddenly, firmly, my wrist is gripped.

  ‘That’s it. We’re eating. Here. Now.’

  What? But it’s only a silly herring festival. Do we not want to hasten home to bed and back to sleep?

  No, apparently we don’t. We don’t even want to see the scarves, or jewellery, or hand-carved rocking horses, the kites or handbags or banks of chrysanthemums. We are sitting down around a gigantic wooden barrel, plunging forks into our bubbling herrings – two apiece, served with baked potatoes and chive cream, four euro per plate – and drinking cider, not out of glasses, but thick ceramic bowls. After that we will have latticed apple pie, glistening with apricot jam, heaped with crème fraiche, and we will knock back bracing shots of calvados, igniting fires in our chests against the winter chill. We will stamp our feet to the music of the marching band. We will laugh and punch each other’s shoulders and make plans for next year’s herring festival.

  ‘Now,’ my friends chortle triumphantly, ‘aren’t you glad we made you come to it?’

  My friends leave, and I miss them. Things are quiet without their chat and laughter. So I decide to make a more determined effort to find the elusive Monsieur Hulot. Would any of my French friends, I ask around, know any nice eligible chaps?

  To their credit, they try. Heads are put together, calls are made, and dates are arranged. Hurray! Even if Vanessa Paradis has already snaffled Johnny Depp, it’s heartening to have a reason to dress up and spritz on my favourite perfume, appropriately called Miracle.

  French men don’t regard bars as congenial places to meet for dates. It comes as a pleasant surprise to be invited to restaurants, where nobody drinks too much and all attempts to go Dutch are firmly declined. Declined in a surprised and faintly reproving way that makes me realise that the very offer is a mistake, an American aberration that has not found its way into French culture. When a Frenchman is taking a woman out, he’s taking her out, and likes to do so without further ado.

  So we sashay off to dinner, and nearly all of the men I meet are very nice, some even bearing flowers.
Pleasant, courteous, some of them prove extremely interesting company and we have some lovely evenings, eat some great food, laugh and chat and have a lot of fun. Through them, I learn quite a bit about French work practice (déontologie, as it’s called), labour law, customs and habits (you must shake hands with your boss and colleagues every morning), and the civil-service practice of mutation, or transferring staff to places they don’t want to be. In some jobs, I’m informed, people can spend years trying to get back to the area where they grew up, and – while it’s technically feasible to apply for postings to yummy areas like the Côte d’Azur – your chances of ever getting there are remote. But there you go: c’est la vie.

  Even if they sometimes seem a bit like guided tours of the inner workings of the French civil service, these sporadic dates are fun, and I enjoy them. But alas, none of them leads anywhere, and as time goes on, I pick up a few clues as to why this might be.

  Frenchmen, it seems, are not very keen on women who have as much to say as they have themselves. Rather than engaging in lively dialogue, they prefer to be listened to, ideally even deferred to. Expressing strong opinions is a mistake, and arguing a point is a definite turn-off. Cracking jokes is another mistake: women are expected to laugh at jokes, not make them. They’re expected to offer sympathy if a man feels sorry for himself (messy divorce, lousy job, and so on), not to comment or, worse, to try to cheer him up. Questioning the French system (things like the thirty-five-hour week) goes down badly, and while expressing an interest in cooking evokes interest, it eventually leads to a discouraging discussion of what the date is really all about, which is to say their search for a housekeeper.

  The lads, ultimately, are not so much in search of companionship or partnership as they are in search of someone to run their homes and lives. What they are doing over dinner is, effectively, conducting job interviews. Two of them frankly say they need a mother for their orphaned children. All of them express very traditional – albeit valid – views of what they want from a relationship, and I, apparently, am not it. I’m independent, talkative and foreign, and might, they fear, turn out to be something of a loose cannon.