French Leave

by Liz Ryan

  Ten years ago, on the outside looking in, I saw France as an alluring oasis of civilisation. Now, like any long-term lover of anyone or anything, I know it well, and I know its faults. It’s gorgeous, but it’s fretful and genetically disposed to an anxiety that sometimes verges on the ridiculous. Its smile is beautiful, but its laugh is restrained. Whereas Ireland … ah. There’s a lot of truth in that old line: ‘when Irish eyes are smiling, they’d steal your heart away’. It occurs to me that the funniest moments of my life, the helpless-with-laughter episodes, have all been in Ireland or with my Irish friends. Things that reduce the French to puddles of nervous self-pity reduce the Irish to tears of laughter. Even at the worst moments – especially at the worst moments – the craic in Ireland, the cynical wit, can be coruscating.

  France does sensational fireworks, but Ireland does verbal pyrotechnics.

  Both countries have been good to live in. Each has its merits and demerits. Nowhere is perfect, and this isn’t about point-scoring. It’s about taking stock after a decade abroad, and trying to figure out what comes next. I’ve reached a crossroads, and honestly don’t know which direction to take. I’m starting to understand how an errant spouse must feel, faced with a choice between marrying the seductive lover she adores or going back to the husband who drives her mad but is still, at the end of the day, her husband. The husband she took for better or worse all those years ago, whose history she shares and who, in some shape or form, she still loves.

  If in fact you are happily married, if you live abroad in the context of a strong family unit, this divisive dilemma isn’t such an issue. The family is the focus no matter where you go, and the family is a source of strength, sustaining and protective. It fits in everywhere, it affords social status, it generates warmth and security and stability. Whereas, if you’re single … well, you’re on your own, in every sense. Logistically, emotionally, financially, physically, spiritually. My friend Sheila, whose husband was recently away for a fortnight for the first time in their long marriage, phoned one evening gasping with surprise: ‘I had no idea! No idea what it’s like to come home every evening to an empty house! It was fun for a few days, but now I can’t wait for him to come home!’

  Home. Such an emotive word. And such a confusing one, for the emigrant.

  It won’t go oik, will it?

  No. I was sure, ten years ago, that France would never degenerate into a land of hoodies, drug dealers and foul-mouthed hooligans. So, now, has it?

  No, happily, it hasn’t. While life’s daily fabric is now woven from a slightly coarser cloth, here as everywhere, the cloth is still raw silk. Everyone still says bonjour when they walk into the bakery or the even more beloved pharmacy, they shake hands and exchange kisses. By and large, the teenagers are well behaved, even if there are more empty cans in the fields and ditches than there used to be. Sometimes headlines shriek news of drugs and other crime, but gangsters don’t conduct daily war on the streets. There’s more graffiti than there used to be, but burglar alarms are still rare. Screaming motorbikes increasingly streak through peaceful villages, but the boy racers are unlikely to rip your handbag from your grasp as they go. People don’t sleep with one eye open, parking is still largely free and easy, and the beaches aren’t buzzing with jet skis. The pace remains slow, and the general feeling is that – ‘hot’ areas apart – France still has a long way to go to catch up with the frenzy of many other countries. A lot of money is invested in sports, public transport, communal facilities and the arts, and it pays off. The two-hour lunch is still a fixture, and Sunday shopping is virtually non-existent – two factors that seem to have a crucially soothing effect on the social structure. On sunny days, we ‘blowins’ still have scandalously long lunches on each other’s patios, laughing and shooting the breeze and completely in agreement that, yes, we all love living here.

  However, the service remains appalling. You can still take root in a shop or restaurant waiting for one thing or another. Bureaucracy and heavy subsidies continue to inhibit initiative, and the state is becoming increasingly nannying, exhorting its citizens to eat their greens and watch their drinking, all but tying their shoelaces for them. And sometimes the citizens behave like children, throwing their toys out of their pram on the slightest provocation. As I write, France is at a standstill because an exceptionally silly strike has shut down fuel supplies, and millions of working hours are being lost while a world-class tantrum is thrown over something that other countries are dealing with like adults.

  Yet for all their strikes and protests, the French can be remarkably meek in certain situations. When our local council cancelled the weekly collection of garden rubbish, nobody said boo, even though it means that elderly or otherwise frail people have to heft everything to the dump – no easy feat if you can’t drive, or lug a tree stump over your shoulder. And nobody questioned the fact that, despite the reduced service, taxes went up. Naturally, prices have gone up overall: that favourite French delicacy, the five-euro kilo of prawns, now costs twelve euro, the eleven-euro parking fine suddenly became twenty and the chap who charged twelve euro for lawnmowing only last year now charges twenty. Just little things, but bigger than they would be in stronger economic circumstances.

  Ten years ago, I found it romantic to close the blue shutters every night and open them every morning; now it’s getting a bit, well, déjà-vu. Ditto the economic constraints of having jumped ship, which used to feel amusingly bohemian but now vaguely chafe. Yes, patching and mending gets boring. Yes, it’s time for new lighting and tiling and paving and state-of-the-art stuff, yes, bring it all on!

  On the home front, Monsieur Hulot has yet to materialise, leaving me socially handicapped, aware of the many gatherings to which I am not invited because I haven’t a husband – thereby making it even harder to meet one. Also leaving me at the mercy of workmen, who, when it comes to ripping off the single woman they see as a soft target, are every bit as adroit as their counterparts in other countries. Being single can be trying anywhere, and now it’s beginning to colour my life in France, to throw a gauzy shade across all the lovely sunshine.

  On the other hand, as a career woman with a hectic social life in Dublin, I was run ragged. I never expected to end up making my own blackberry jam from my own fruit, waving a sticky spoon and bopping round the kitchen singing in French in a stripy apron. I never expected to enjoy cooking so much, to sleep late on a rainy morning or to go swimming on a whim – no boss, no bus, no pressing schedule! Financially, I moved to France with my breath in my fist, so to speak, and yet my anxiety proved groundless. I may starve yet, because France is a bottomless money pit, but at least food has appeared on the table for the last ten years. As everywhere, the recession is taking its toll, but it’s less acute in France and anyway, the passing of time has demonstrated the futility of worrying, of wasting today on what may or may not happen tomorrow. While I’m now coveting certain material pleasures, I’ve yet to lose any sleep over them.

  Would I do it all again? Oh yes! Emphatically. Despite some misgivings, misunderstandings and muddles, despite sometimes missing out on friends’ milestone events in Ireland, I’ve loved my decade in France. Most mornings, I wake up with a smile for no particular reason, and yes, my soul does sing in its shower. If I laugh less loudly here, I shed fewer tears too: there’s less battle to be done. There’s an equilibrium, a harmony, and an often quite profound contentment. As experiments go, this one can be declared a shining success, yielding a great sense of achievement. The only question is: what now?

  It’s late October. The harvest moon is huge, ‘sailing on ghostly galleons’ as the poem goes, its orange light silhouetting a bat flitting across the garden. Up in the silver birches, thousands of stars sparkle through the black filigree of the bare branches, a lone owl hoots into the night and there is soft scuffling in the grass: a mole, probably, or a hedgehog. In the kitchen, a plaited blue basket overflows with freshly picked apples, mushrooms and walnuts. Across the way, over in Marian’s fi
eld, his sheep are draped in wisps of mist, the night so silent their munching is all but audible. From somewhere on the coast, a foghorn faintly sounds.

  It’s time to go to bed, and sleep on it.

  I wake up dreaming of some barmy drama in the post office on Inisbofin Island. This is absolutely insane: I’ve never been on Inisbofin and have no idea whether it even has a post office. But clearly, at some subliminal level, Ireland and I must be trying to communicate about something.

  ‘Come back, Paddy Reilly, all is forgiven’?

  Can people who’ve had a lover’s tiff with their country kiss and make up with it? Forgive and forget, have a big hug and start over? Can they really rediscover each other, and take each other back? Even if they do, will they be able to live together again? Can they work out a new, stronger, better relationship?

  According to economist David McWilliams, the Irish diaspora should come back. Of course it should, without a second thought! It will renew and regenerate the country and be welcomed with open arms, David says. But is he right? I can remember a time when returned emigrants were treated very coolly. Their absence, if not quite treasonable, certainly indicated disaffection, and nobody wanted to hear a word about how great life was ‘away’.

  Okay, we won’t talk about how great it can be ‘away’, then. But the prospect of returning to the mother ship is scary, and raises many questions. Starting with the very simple one: why?

  Ties. Tugs. Heartstrings. Evocative sounds and smells, a shared past, lovely landscapes, the celebrated lilt of Irish laughter. All of these things colour the reality – which is that the country’s up the creek, a financial shipwreck for which nobody seems to even recognise, never mind accept, responsibility. On the plus side, the collapse might make a house an affordable possibility, but on the minus side, it almost certainly means a lower standard of living. Work could be hard to find; even from this distance, I’ve already felt the tightening of belts. Pensions, medical care, social services, public safety … all of these things have been eroded by the financial crisis to a much greater degree than they have in France. I don’t know anyone here who’s actually lost their job, but I know several in Ireland, middle-class people who are suddenly struggling, frightened, verging on panic. Until recently, Ireland was almost exhaustingly exuberant; now it’s gazing awestruck at the debris of a hooley that spun wildly out of control.

  You’d have to love your country a whole heap to go back to that kind of nightmare. And what exactly is the impetus for going back? Is it true love, or might it simply be itchy feet? Might I have a low boredom threshold, a growing awareness of having ‘done’ France, made it work, made the point? Does this happen to every migrant everywhere, at some stage, do they just get restless? Is there anything actually wrong with France, seriously wrong enough to drive me out?

  All over the world, thousands of Irish emigrants must ask themselves all these questions every day. Is Ireland still the kind of country where we want to raise our children? If we do, will they have a future in it? Does it have a warm welcome for us black sheep? Can we cope with the possibility of unemployment, social upheaval, a severely weakened economy with little prospect of improvement? Will a nostalgic night in a pub, with a pint and a turf fire and maybe a tin whistle, be enough to lure us back to ghost estates, dole queues and severely straitened old age? Will we feel safe? Will we feel ripped off? Will there be defibrillators in every village? Will the craic compensate for the climate? Will the new cuts and raised taxes prove unmanageable, or are things not as bad as they look?

  And what about the life we’d be leaving behind? The one we worked so hard to build up, the friends we made, the house we bought, the job we got, the children’s subsidised skiing and swimming lessons, the way we don’t worry about letting them walk or cycle home alone, the way they love shrimping on that beach all summer?

  It’s a tough decision. Head over heart, mind over matter. Some will feel the inexorable pull of home and emotions may start running high, while others, more pragmatic, will tackle it with just a hint of flint. Yes, of course Ireland is ‘home’ and of course we’d love to live there if we could, but …

  On any logical basis, I can’t persuade myself that returning to Ireland would improve my quality of life. But I am increasingly aware of one thing: my windy Norman plateau is starting to feel ever so slightly remote, in every sense. I’ve been here ten years now, done it, got the T-shirt. It’s still lovely, leisurely and very laid back, but at an age when many people are starting to contemplate retiring, I curiously find myself revving up again, starting to crave a bit of buzz, a flash of the bright lights, the kind of pace you don’t find in the sleepy French countryside. Ironically, just as the music winds down in Ireland, I’m ready for action, sensing resurgent energy after this long and refreshing break, something new to contribute if only I could figure out exactly what it might be.

  Which means … what? A change of pace, clearly, and of direction too? Stay in France, but move to Cannes, Cherbourg, Paris? Would La Rochelle furnish enough stimulus, or do I need Galway? Strasbourg or Skerries? Deauville or Dublin or Dingle? The more I ponder their various pros and cons, the more confusing it gets. And then sometimes I think I must be off my rocker, gazing in despair around the basement full of junk, the stacks of stuff, the four fully furnished bedrooms: who in their right mind would contemplate moving house at all if they didn’t absolutely have to? Moving house is notoriously stressful, and if you’re not sure where you want to go, or why, it borders on certifiable insanity. The gods might even punish this kind of ingratitude – the apparently long-term inability to appreciate so many blessings, so much tranquillity, so much beauty?

  Would a holiday help? Maybe a month in Mayo or Mulhuddart would cure this confusion. A knees-up in Monte Carlo, a blast of Los Angeles, a dose of Dubai, some slash-and-burn shopping in New York? Maybe after that I’d totter back shattered to this lazily lovely countryside, count my blessings and cycle off into the tangerine-tinted sunset?

  But no. Instinctively I sense that tourism is not the answer. Indeed, it may even be part of the question, because for years now I’ve felt like a tourist, enjoying an extended visit to France without ever truly belonging to the country. On the plus side, this exonerates me from the kind of responsibility I always somehow felt for Ireland: whatever France’s woes, they are not of my making nor within my powers of solution. Being a foreigner is, in many ways, quite liberating. Sometimes nowadays I even pretend not to speak French, because playing the hapless tourist can oil clogged wheels. However, being foreign does leave you on the wrong side of some glass ceiling, eternally looking in without fully fitting in. You are an observer, a hurler on the ditch.

  Do I want to grab my hurley, go home and jump back into the ditch? Abandon the life I’ve built here, the hazy lazy days of summer, the soaring notes of spring, the rich depths of autumn, the white glare of winter? Bid adieu to everyone who’s been so kind, so friendly, so much fun? Get off the sun lounger and back onto the hamster wheel? Start queuing for buses again, commuting, searching and paying for parking when, as things stand, I’m only short of wandering down to the village for croissants in my pyjamas?

  No! Don’t do it!

  Would you think I was nuts to go back to Ireland? Or would you think me nuts to stay here? What would you do, if you lived in a beautiful country whose only crime was that it wasn’t your country?

  It’s not acute homesickness. I’m not breaking out in a rash or floods of tears or anything. Most of the time it’s scarcely perceptible, just a tiny throb under the skin, and much of the time I don’t feel any pain at all. Most of the time, I feel great. But, like a toothache, might it get worse if the first little pangs are not addressed and treated?

  Ah, la belle France. Who would have thought it would turn out to be such a conundrum? Or am I just an ungrateful strap who needs a good slap? Maybe I should go out and get a job, some ghastly job that would make me realise how lucky I am and leave me too tired to think about any futu
re whatsoever, anywhere.

  Would I miss France, if I left?

  Yes. Oh, yes. I’d miss it in the way you’d miss George Clooney, say, if for reasons beyond comprehension you were engaged to him and then felt you had to break it off. Sorry George, but I’m going to marry the boy back home! The boy who’s lost all his money and drinks too much and has a sore head … but the one I’ve known all my life, the one I grew up with, the one who gets my jokes and makes me laugh. A naughty feckless kid, but freckled and red-haired, with an adorable, unforgettable smile.

  Or maybe he’s not a kid, any more? Maybe Ireland has changed, moved on, grown into a stronger, happier, nicer place? Maybe I have too? Maybe we’ve both mellowed, and things would work out much better the second time round? By all accounts, the recession has had a softening side effect, there’s almost a spirit of the Blitz, of people doing their best to help each other out in these challenging times. And I’m more understanding, too, of so many of the things that seemed to make no sense at the time. France has had a soothing and maturing effect.

  Limbo is a strange place to find yourself in the middle of your life. But that’s how it feels today, after ten years abroad, albeit ten very happy years, in this most beguiling of countries. Suddenly, I’m standing at a crossroads, with no map and no compass. In an ideal world, there’d be some way to keep a foot in both camps, but I can’t see how … or would that just be ‘chicken’ anyway, and a shortcut to schizophrenia?

  Eh, oui. France is as beautiful as ever, often quite heartbreakingly beautiful. This morning I stood by the sea watching huge glittering pillars of water blowing across the beach, sculpted by the wind, amazed that after all this time I still have the luxury of spending a morning at the seaside. A little girl ran across the pebbles, playing hide-and-seek with the waves, her pink scarf flying on the breeze, and I thought: such a beautiful, perfect picture. Claude Monet could not have painted anything more beautiful.