Farewell My French Love

by Nadine Williams

  Once inside the building, the Alliance Française juggernaut sweeps me along—and soon I have my student ID card with a dreadful photograph, the classroom number, the textbook for level A2, a map of the building layout, and a booklet of extra cultural activities.

  Exhilarated, I enter the classroom on the top floor. One cursory look at students sitting around a U-shape of tables tells me I’m the oldest, although a few women are in their forties. Most of the dozen men and women would be under twenty-five. Our teacher, Claire, begins in slow French and each of us introduces ourselves. Je m’appelle … J’habite … Je suis Australienne … and so on … I’m the only Australian, the only veuve (widow). Only Bahjah-mah comes from an English-speaking country. I have no idea of his name in English. And then Claire swings into fluent French, the kind Olivier would use when talking at the dinner table with Dominique, not one word of which I understand. My body clenches like a fist and in an instant I understand I’m right out of my comfort zone. By teatime at 11 am, I’m in shock and scurry away to a far-off corner of the cafeteria to recover. As we enter the class again, I ask the American law student what his name is. He laughs. ‘Benjamin.’ I feel a fool.

  By 1 pm, I’m so buffeted by a full blast of a foreign language that I cannot eat and bypass the sumptuous student cafeteria to slip out onto the street.

  Back in the apartment, I stay in my room sleeping until Isabelle calls me down for dinner. She has prepared a simple meal of Vienna sausages and homemade sauerkraut. A small green salad sits on the table. The dogs have settled themselves around us and I’m pleased Ursula, the blind Labrador, is resting against my chair leg. She likes me and her presence is comforting.

  Isabelle asks in French about my day and when I struggle with a response she asks if I would prefer English.

  ‘Yes, please,’ I respond. ‘I’m absolutely exhausted tonight.’ I spare her the real truth that the class was more than I could cope with.

  ‘It’s good if you can watch the French news,’ she suggests.

  ‘Perhaps tomorrow night if you don’t mind. I’ve had enough French for one day.’

  She laughs and tells me how her parents packed her off to an English high school in an exchange program for a year when she was fifteen. ‘I couldn’t speak a word of English,’ she says. ‘I remember my parents at the airport looking all worried as if the ordeal would be too much, but I was so happy; it was such an adventure.’

  ‘It’s an adventure alright.’

  ‘Soon you will be speaking French like I speak English.’

  SIXTEEN

  MEMORIES IN MONTPARNASSE

  ‘What else is happiness but the development of our abilities?’

  Madame de Staël

  Wednesday morning begins with such a biting autumn chill that I run back upstairs to collect my hand-knitted scarf. On the way out, I glance in the wall of mirrors in the apartment’s entrance foyer and the woman staring back at me could be any local Parisian I pass on my daily march down Boulevard Raspail. Yet, it is me, and I shiver with pleasure at my transformation. Not only have I stepped into student mode, but no one would guess I’m not a local.

  I actually enjoy today’s class—proverbes et citations and more future simple verb conjugations by writing about ‘Comment sera la France dans vingt ans?’ Lots of pretty pictures, maps and graphs, but mostly it’s about social change in France over the next twenty years. During my journalism career, I covered social change and demographic shifts, particularly in the Baby Boomer generation. I try hard to follow Claire’s comments.

  By 1 pm, I’m filled with exhilaration: French is finished for today, I have learnt something and now I can walk anywhere I like in Paris. Over the years I have taken the well-trodden tourist routes of Paris with great pleasure, but now I promènade à pied around my quartier. My little Paris world extends to a few kilometres within the boulevards of Raspail, Saint-Germain-des-Près and Montparnasse. My two furthest points are Montparnasse Cemetery and Le Jardin du Luxembourg, where I took my lunch yesterday.

  I line up for a tasty two-course hot lunch at the Alliance cafeteria before crossing Raspail to explore the other side of my Paris world. The day has given way to soft sunshine and a warm breeze as Rue Stanislas leads past the Notre-Dame-des-Champs cathedral onto Boulevard du Montparnasse where, across the road, I spot an ordinary bar on the opposite corner. I usually take an outside table, but today I venture inside Charlie Birdy Bar and sit on a well-worn leather settee at the long, wide window, open to the bustling boulevard. Here I doodle in my notebook mixing drawing up lists of excruciating French verb endings with capturing the life around me.

  It occurs to me that I’m never free of memory and even here in this English-themed establishment inanimate objects trigger thoughts of Olivier. The comfortable low lounge reminds me of his brown leather settee and how worn and cracked it was. Same colour, made from some soft, pampered European cow. It was torn in one spot but he had thrown a tasselled rug over it. It, too, had a smooth contoured back. He and Colette had brought it with them from France many years ago and it had big wooden balls for front feet, which would have been very fashionable once, and its arm rests also were padded. Whenever I suggested that he give away the old thing, he would joke that it had aged along with him, and just because it had a few wrinkles he wasn’t going to part with it. ‘You wouldn’t throw me out just because I sag a bit about the jowls would you?’ he would joke. Eventually he gave the settee to one of his sons when we pulled down the old house. He reckoned there would be no room for it in the house we rented at Hindmarsh Island while the new house was being built.

  Silly, really, how something as banal as a settee can trigger memory. It calls to mind something novelist A.S. Byatt said in a rare TV interview, speaking about the death of her only son, Charles, who died in the week of his eleventh birthday, the victim of a drunk driver. Almost twenty years later, she said, ‘You don’t get over it and you suffer greatly from people supposing that you will. You suffer from people not understanding the pain of grief.’

  Perhaps this is why I feel so at peace here, alone, to wallow in memory. Because I spend my days searching the faces of every French man over the age of sixty to find a lookalike, someone who will remind me of how he looked. He must have lovely brown eyes and a strong straight nose, clipped greying beard and trimmed moustache, which must be a few shades darker, and black, bushy eyebrows like Sir Robert Menzies. Those shaggy outcrops which hung like verandahs over his eyes showed that he was once a raven-haired French man. I didn’t like it when he clipped those straggly hairs leaving his eyebrows looking like cut lawn. No one resembles him though, and all I see on these streets of Montparnasse are ordinary, older men with none of the dashing style Olivier had until his diagnosis.

  My coffee arrives to snap me out of my mood. I’m living my own single life now and it seems that I have made a manoeuvre from loneliness into this sense of aloneness—because I can think warmly upon how privileged I was to have shared even nine years with him. He, who shared his French lifestyle with me in Paris each year, has left our experiences as his legacy.

  It’s the first week in October and beautiful, fine weather. I peel off my trench coat. The warm sun bathes me through the open window and I fall asleep. No one bothers me and when I awake the sun has shifted downwards to about three o’clock. I go to the bathroom, pick up a French Elle magazine, order a Kir and return to my possie.

  Of course I could be on the Right Bank shopping on Avenue Montaigne or the Champs-Élysées, but Paris has come to mean so much more to me than the tourist highlights. The city is like an onion with each layer to be peeled to reveal yet another pocket of history until one reaches its heart—Parisians themselves living their ordinary lives within cooee of a metro station in the most beautiful city in the world. Just for a moment I’m one of them, a solitary figure in one corner of a large, mostly empty bar.

  Another hour passes before I cross the road to return to the Alliance building where I must study in the li
brary. But the noise of children playing entices me into the cathedral grounds. Instead of taking the shortcut down Rue Stanislas, I open the iron gate of le petit parc. The gated playground is filled with children rushing past each other, sliding, swinging, climbing, crying out and their joy is infectious. I decide to stop and watch them.

  There is a small patch of lawn contained within a semicircle of shrubs near the entry gate, which swings shut behind me. Here in this small garden, over by the greenery, away from the straight path, a woman lies on her stomach sound asleep, her head propped up on a rolled-up fabric bag. Her legs are spread out slightly and her worn walking shoes are laid on top of a tattered travel case. Her clothing is a mishmash of long cotton patterned skirt, caught up slightly, and her face is covered from the sun by a limp pale blue cardigan. Tufts of peppered hair peep out. A gathering of things including a raincoat suggests a tough street life. I wonder if this city bag lady is alive, but I pass by and sit down on one of the slatted park benches under mature chestnut trees.

  There are a number of grannies and nannies engrossed in reading or attached to mobiles or guarding the odd stroller. On the next bench to my left, shopping bags at her feet and Louis Vuitton handbag on the seat beside her, a woman sits staring blankly into space. She has the stance of a Rodin statue—deep in contemplative thought. Hers is an eclectic look: painted fingernails match her peach-coloured stockings, which in turn pick up one of the main colours in a short, patterned dress. It has a low neckline and her attractive bust line bulges slightly, bent forward as she is. However, she wears ugg boots with tassels. I wonder if it’s the latest fashion look because I read in French Elle that this winter Parisians are adopting our Australian-style ugg boots in a sensible bid to beat winter chills.

  There is a loud shout from the playground and she recognises one of her own. ‘Non, Monique!’ she calls out sharply, following up with rapid admonition ‘Regardez Frédérique!’

  A pretty woman, she is probably aged around thirty-five and yet the expression on her flawless face is not the soft loveliness of youth, but taut as if she is mentally drawing in too many strings of responsibility around her mouth. Her longish, light brown hair is streaked with golden highlights and she pushes strands behind her ear in a distinct mannerism. On her right hand, I notice a wedding ring and a large diamond glints in the sun. She glances my way and extends a wan smile before fumbling in her bag for cigarettes, finds one, lights it, closes her eyes, inhales and then slowly exhales, opening her eyes. Just in time. Youngest son is exploring the gate handle.

  ‘Non, ne touchez pas la barrière Frédérique,’ she cries.

  A heavy sigh escapes her lips and I have a sudden urge to reach out and tell her the one word I ignored when I was raising my children: ‘Enjoy them!’ A well-meaning older woman friend gave me this advice when I was twenty-seven and suddenly alone with my two little daughters, both under four. Because now I know they grow up in the flicker of an eye and slip away into adulthood soon enough. This Parisienne reminds me of my own long years of motherhood, which I mostly did enjoy.

  It’s well after 4 pm. I rush off across Raspail to the Alliance library to work on one of the listening stations, but my thoughts drift back to the playground and those two women who reveal that la vie quotidienne for women in Paris is anything but a walk in the park. Poverty stalks single women here, too. Motherhood and incessant demands of raising children gobble up a big slice of our lives, but it is finite. And afterwards? We women have many options depending on whether we are alone or with a partner, whether we want to relax or take up new pursuits. A new word slips into my mind. Like enjoy so many years ago, this one is also a beacon in my aloneness. Freedom. I have delicious freedom to do exactly what I want for the rest of my life.

  SEVENTEEN

  LE JOCKEY

  ‘Not until we are lost, do we begin to understand ourselves.’

  Henry Thoreau

  My French class is relentless. Future simple verb endings daily. À la découverte de la langue means hours of learning how to utilise the proper course of email conversation and the nuances of French familiar and formal communication. Protocol! At least sending emails is a skill I can use if I can harness the ability to write proper French. And it beats the first few days that were spent discussing—in French—the planet’s future problems of climate change if the issues are not addressed by government leaders now. Such a devious way to teach the future simple tense.

  I never suspected I would need to learn to express an opinion on global warming in French. The subject is complex and very political even in Australia, whereas I want to learn everyday conversational French; to put meaningful sentences together and to express simple opinions on la vie quotidienne (daily life). What to eat, where to buy, how many people are coming for dinner, what colour to choose for the curtains, the latest film reviews and so on.

  However, the ageing of French society is one issue that interests me and when Claire shoots a question my way, I sling a few French words together to express an opinion. I use my dictionary which, theoretically, is forbidden, but the youngsters are all tapping away at their mobiles for translations.

  One cannot imagine that ageing issues would interest the rest of the class because most of them are very young. Every sentence Claire utters shoves me out of my comfort zone as I try and catch meaning. I count the minutes until 11 am when we all escape to the cafeteria for coffee. There I sit silently on a faraway table from the throng who are eating, drinking and conversing together because I’m too mentally exhausted to attempt any light conversation in French. I know my Dutch companion, Fleur, speaks some English and also Lucy, an Indonesian woman living in Paris, but I’m so out of my depth that anxiety has wiped that perpetual smile off my face. I don’t want to attract people and this behaviour surprises me. I’m usually the social butterfly, the conversation connector at any gathering. But I’m already struggling with ‘Who am I?’, and here I am without my language.

  Today, on the fourth day of sitting alone at morning teatime, Lucy beckons me to join her. She has the complexion of a porcelain doll and a gentle manner. Her hijab is wrapped around a black chador swathed around her forehead.

  ‘My husband has been head-hunted by a French energy company and I live in Paris with my family,’ she says in good English.

  It’s so good to hear my own language so beautifully spoken with a foreign accent and I’m inspired to continue with French. Mind you, ten years have passed since I made a similar pledge after hearing Jane Fonda speaking fluent French on television in France. There was always too much other living to do than learning the French dictionary, which is what Olivier told me he had done to learn English. ‘Each night I would memorise a few pages,’ he told me.

  Lucy tells me her home is Sumatra, which was badly hit by the tsunami.

  ‘I had a holiday in Bali many years ago,’ I say. ‘It was so charming I wonder that I have never returned.’

  ‘Ubud is also beautiful,’ she says.

  ‘Yes, we drove through Ubud; it was an exotic mountain village if I remember.’

  She asks where I come from in Australia and when I I tell her Adelaide, she clasps her hands.

  ‘I know of Adelaide,’ she says enthusiastically. ‘One of my biggest mistakes was not to do my university degree in Australia. All of my family graduated from a university in Australia, either Sydney University or Monash in Melbourne. My father, my brothers and my uncle.’ She breaks off her sentence, but I wait.

  ‘They wanted the same for me. My uncle offered to pay my expenses, and suggested Adelaide telling me it was a city of beautiful beaches and hills. But at the time I simply didn’t want to go. I have regretted it so much and I have promised myself to visit your country one day.’

  Compared with my own parents’ appalling attitudes to my education, she was so lucky and yet she failed to grasp the baton of opportunity. Here we are meeting at a certain point of our life-course where we are making up for it by learning together. It is never too
late to grow in knowledge. I find her company is stimulating. Lucy’s eldest daughter is doing the baccalauréat at a Paris high school.

  One day after class, Fleur and her teammate, Pedro, plonk themselves down at my table and proceed to eat their lunch with me. The nineteen-year-old Mexican lad is clearly infatuated with her. Pedro tells me he is learning French until the end of the year while Fleur begins an internship at a Paris hospital the week after she finishes at Alliance.

  ‘I know it will be very hard for me to communicate to begin with,’ she says of her future move.

  They ask me why I’m learning French in Paris, so I tell them about Olivier and my memoir, From France with Love, about our love story. ‘Now I want to hang onto my French lifestyle,’ I tell them.

  ‘There are many happy memories for you,’ she says kindly.

  ‘Bien sûr,’ agrees Pedro, who is already bilingual, speaking proficient English and his French is quite good, too.

  After the break, there’s an astonishing lesson in French culture as I turn the page of my textbook. I cannot believe my luck. There is the heading Entretien avec Marie Antoinette with a fancy sketch of the notorious queen holding a crook and le Plan de Travail (the plan of work) includes choosing someone to interview. Well, well! No wonder the whole French population knows the story of their beheaded queen: it’s woven into their education. This is a godsend for me, I muse. I busily prepare a list of prime words and I line up Fleur for my mock interview. My leading question to Fleur in our classroom exercise is a giveaway: ‘Qui était la riene à Versailles à l’epoque?’ Who was the queen at Versailles at the time?

  ‘Reine Marie Antoinette.’

  Fleur’s return question to me is equally easy. ‘Qui est morte dans un accident sous le pont de Paris?’ Who died in an accident under the bridge in Paris?