French Leave Page 5
Lane, we keep telling him. You mean on the inside lane. No, he replies enigmatically, I just mean on the inside.
Hmm. Personally, I had to have a little chat with myself, and accept that living in Normandy means sometimes driving over huge bridges. Gradually, I learned to simply grip the wheel, shut my eyes and shoot across. Or take one of the ferries which, miraculously, still survive.
Like the bridges, Normandy’s cliffs are fairly impressive. Unlike Dover’s, they are not white but rusty and streaky: the ‘Alabaster coast’ is a bit of a misnomer, though I suppose the tourist board might take it amiss if I suggested a good scrub with a bottle of Cif. Monet often painted these cliffs, as did Pissarro, Sisley and pals. Should you wish to see them, hurry up, because they are eroding at a spectacular rate (the cliffs, that is). Any day now, Normandy will be down in Provence.
Eventually, after a decent settling-in interval, Irish friends started arriving to inspect my new French abode. All of them, without exception, gasped and clapped their hands to their mouths in horror as we drove up to the plateau on which I live. Admittedly, it does look somewhat bare, maybe even bleak if you’re arriving from semi-detached suburbia. It has a wide sweep of unhedged fields, a belt of tall trees and … well, not much else.
‘But good grief, it’s so isolated! Aren’t you scared?’
No. I’m not. My plateau isn’t half as scary as downtown Dublin. It’s quiet and peaceful, and people can walk from one village to the next unmolested. Since I arrived, there has been only one crime: two middle-aged ladies, armed with scissors, snuck out one night and brazenly helped themselves to dozens of the football-sized hydrangeas that line the lanes. In late summer, Normandy foams with hydrangeas – pale pink, deep rose, baby blue, indigo, cream and pale pistachio. It is overwhelmingly tempting to liberate a few for one’s living room.
Only you wouldn’t want to start your new life in France on the wrong side of the law, would you? So I didn’t nick any hydrangeas. Instead, I found a much more interesting way to get arrested.
4.
Summertime
A summer’s day, every day. Real, hot, high summer. As if in welcome, the sun shone non-stop that first summer – a hot, steady sun I’d never known before. Every morning sparkled and beckoned, every ditch danced with poppies, every wall hummed with bees foraging in the lavender. It must be a fluke, I thought. It can’t possibly get as hot as this, can it? Thirty-five sizzling degrees?
Mais oui, it could and it did. Several neighbours installed inflatable pools (to which I was never invited, the locals were not proving to be very friendly), the birds whistled nonchalantly and the rustic silence was punctuated by the steady thwack of tennis balls on racquets. The village tennis court was barely two minutes’ walk from my house and I couldn’t believe my luck – tennis, instead of work!
French sports facilities are excellent. Every self-respecting little village has its own tennis court and every town has a swimming pool which, in my case, was five minutes’ drive away. There were riding stables, a lake with canoes, water-skiing, roller ramps, mini-golf, a basketball court, a bowling alley, a cinema, a theatre, a sailing school … all this within a ten-minute radius of the middle of nowhere.
But, in summer, best of all is the beach. Having grown up in Dublin with its many lovely beaches, I’d chosen a coastal region because I couldn’t bear to live far from the sea. While many Norman beaches are stony, not sandy, as the temperature headed for forty degrees I was very glad I hadn’t chosen Paris, or even the sweltering south which was reportedly ‘melting’. Some people spend weeks painting, gardening and decorating when they move house, but not me: I was savouring the sun, and spending a lot of time at the beach. All day, actually, every day. It was near, it was free and it was scorching.
In summer, a French beach is a culture all of its own. Each one has its row of little beach huts, striped pink or blue or yellow or just plain white, varying from tiny wooden sheds up to spanking clapboard cabins into which townies move for the season, resolutely hanging lace curtains and planting geraniums. While monsieur commutes to work in the city, madame and the children set up camp on the coast – a Brittas Bay-type arrangement that often offers welcome breathing space to all concerned. Sometimes madame is très élégante, dripping in diamonds (literally, when she swims in them), her white bikini by Chanel or Dior, her tan perfected last winter in the Alpine sunshine. Sometimes she carries a tiny Yorkie, its blonde fringe matching her own, tied up in a fetching silk ribbon. More often than not, she will know all her neighbours on the waterfront, because the same families have owned the same cabins for generations. Or the same manor houses, discreetly screened behind vast banks of hydrangeas, immaculately manicured like their owners. While the children disport themselves on the beach – with no screeching or swearing, whether the family is installed in a cabin or a manor house – madame will draw her deckchair into the circle alongside those of her friends, rather like cowboys circling the wagons. Slicking on her sunblock, adjusting her hat, taking out her knitting, she settles in for a nice gentle gossip to work up an appetite for lunch. It is a timeless tableau, often painted by Corot, Sisley and such lads.
Ah, lunch at the seaside! No, it’s not a bag of crisps or a can of Coke. It is a milestone, a marker in the day’s mellow progress, a retreat under a fluttering parasol while the sun is at its zenith. Dozens of little seafood bistros fringe the waterfront, and from mid-morning the air begins to suffuse with the aroma of chargrilled prawns, sea bass and sole. In Normandy, the classic dish is mussels steamed in cider or white wine, with just a soupçon of cream … but first, an aperitif perhaps?
Of course you can have a gin and tonic or whatever you like bar sherry, of which France has never heard. But trust me, what you want is a kir: a little dose of fruit liqueur, topped up with still or sparkling white wine. It didn’t take long to discover that my favourites were lavender, violette, raspberry and cherry, and that I could knock them back like lemonade. With nibbles, of course – maybe a handful of nuts, olives or minuscule salt crackers. But you’re only allowed your aperitif after you’ve had your swim, showered (all the beaches have showers) and run a kilometre in the sun to dry off. This is one of the many ways in which French women contrive to keep their silhouette. And the taste of that kir, out in the open sea air, is bliss.
And now – come along, les enfants! – we will stroll the length of the promenade, choosing our restaurant, which we can afford every day of the holidays because the set menu is only ten euro. We will leave our beach gear where it is, since nobody ever steals it, and we will embark en masse with our friends to study each menu in detail, inhaling the aroma of sizzling seafood before, finally, choosing the bistro that offers the best rapport qualité/prix. Yes, of course they can seat four mothers and six children, just push these tables together! Odile, put on your T-shirt, you know swimsuits are not allowed at table!
And thus summer’s noon ritual begins. France is à table, eating fish brought in by the trawlers barely an hour ago, sold straight off the deck. Not, of course, that everyone goes to a bistro: for those who prefer to picnic, there is always a little stall selling hot dogs, pancakes and the most delicious ice creams (the saltwater toffee flavour should be illegal). And there are those who bring their own supplies: big cooler chests filled with baguettes, roast chicken, fruit and wine, all elaborately laid out on the sand or stones, shaded by a drunkenly angled parasol. Not that anyone ever gets drunk. A glass or two of wine – as much as is necessary to lubricate lunch – and no more. After all, madame wishes to be wide awake for her game of cards with her chums this afternoon, or her mini-golf, or perhaps monsieur will join her at one of the giant outdoor chess sets while the children have their windsurfing lesson.
As summer progressed, the regular beach bums started getting to know each other, and I gradually found myself becoming part of a group congregating at the east end of the beach. Mostly teachers with months of leisure time looming ahead of them, taking turns to mind each other�
��s children while the others went in to swim, they seemed friendly. At first, we didn’t know each other at all; then we began to recognise each other, to nod bonjour on arrival each morning, to exchange pleasantries, share sunblock, move our beach mats closer together – and, gradually, to bond. By the end of the summer, we even knew the restaurateurs, distinguishing the friendly from the fierce, the ones who put their prices up for the tourists from the ones who didn’t. It was only sporadic, casual social contact, but still … I began to think that making friends might not be quite as difficult as I had been given to understand.
Back home, the house was strewn with half-unpacked suitcases, the cellar stacked sky-high with crates, everything shouting for attention. But what’s the point of moving to a sunny climate if you’re not going to enjoy it? If it was available on prescription, this spa treatment would cost a fortune. No deadlines, no traffic jams, no shrilling phones … all over the world, millions of stressed-out people would give anything for this simple, blissful freedom. To lie on the beach browsing a book, inhaling lungfuls of salt air, living at their own pace. Often, my mind drifted from my book, and I found myself simply staring out to sea, devoting hours to the study of passing clouds. Decompressing, deep breathing, shrugging off years of stress, without a single pang of guilt.
But, as anywhere, some people create their own stress. As summer wore on I began to meet some of my new neighbours, and noted a marked difference between those raring to get to the beach and those who would love to go if only they didn’t have the kitchen to clean, the furniture to dust and all that ironing to do. ‘Get a life’, I sometimes wanted to shout, carpe diem! One glorious sunny day I found a neighbour closeted in her basement, ironing her bath towels, looking frazzled and shocked when I suggested going to the beach: ironing rates very high on France’s list of priorities. No, of course monsieur couldn’t go to the beach either, he had the lawn to mow, and the hedge to trim! Tweaking the garden into a mini-Versailles – often with the aid of a measuring tape – rates high too. Leaving them to it, I went back to the beautiful, sparkling blue sea.
In the late summer afternoons, after lunch, a little snooze and another swim, the beach takes on a different aspect. The soaring windsurfers, blithe and colourful as dragonflies, fold their wings and return to shore, leaving the rock pools at ebb tide to the shrimp-fishers silhouetted against the scarlet sky in their waders, trawling their huge nets through the shallows. Vast triangles on long sticks, the shrimp nets weigh a ton when full, requiring much skill in the handling if you are not to become unbalanced and be flung into the waves, inhaling half the English Channel as you vanish. Sometimes, as the sun was setting, I watched fathers taking their small sons by the hand, leading them into the water, teaching them how to hold their miniature nets at just the right angle. The boys scooping up their booty of shellfish with whoops of glee were a lovely sight, peaceful and timeless, and I never tired of it, thinking what a pleasure it was to see parents and children enjoying each other without any electronic hardware coming between them.
Meanwhile, one must make the most of la saison, which for the French means July and August only. A curious notion, when you come from a country that endlessly seeks new ways to prolong the tourist season, but France doesn’t do golf tournaments or murder weekends or girlie jaunts or any other such spring or autumn events: everything opens up on 1 July and closes down on 31 August and that’s that – even if 31 August falls on a blazing weekend with thousands of tourists around. Not only are parasols packed up and shops shuttered, entire restaurants are dismantled until there remains only a wooden deck where, you could have sworn, people were tucking into lobster only yesterday. In September, no matter how nice the weather, the only people to be found on the beaches are foreigners and pensioners, and too bad if they fancy a barquette of chips or a blackcurrant kir.
‘Sorry, closed!’ is one of France’s favourite expressions. This is not a country to move to if you are a believer in Sunday shopping, in picking up a pizza at eleven o’clock at night or buying your Christmas decorations in April. France has seasons, and summer is summer, and voilà! After you get over the shock, you wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s reassuring to know where you stand, refreshing to see each season segueing into the next, changing not only weather and clothing but mood, menu and tempo.
Not that I was finished with summer just yet. It was bliss to be in shorts every day, to be swimming and tanning and feeling wildly healthy. My long-crocked ankle, swollen from a botched ligament problem years before, shrank back to its original size thanks to all the swimming and walking on pebbles. (They act, a physiotherapist told me, like a Japanese foot massage.) And besides, my new life as a layabout had lots more to offer.
Sunday morning, a quarter to five. The sun is rising, a skein of mist evaporating off the … oh my God, look look look!
Overnight, the fields surrounding the house have morphed from green to blue. Miles and miles of the most perfect baby blue with the palest mauve undertone, gently undulating in the morning air. Stunned by the silent beauty of the spectacle, I gaze down from my bedroom window (on tiptoe, it’s a dormer) at this miracle.
It’s the flax. The future linen, destined to sashay down the catwalks of Paris, signed Dior, Givenchy, Hermès or Chanel. I have never seen it in its raw state before, but here it is, growing literally under my nose, reaching the peak of perfection for just five brief, enchanting days. Acres of it, everywhere. The entire landscape is blue and the shade of blue changes depending on the sun and cloud and wind, deepening to steel, lightening to lilac, snuggling back to baby blue. Of course, everyone had been talking since late May about how ‘it must come any day now’, but it was still a shock when it did, and I was transfixed; it looked as if the sea had moved inland and was lapping at my garden gate.
The bike, I thought frantically. Let’s get up and go cycling through the fields right now. It will be stunning. Let’s take the camera and send everyone photos of this lovely morning. (Indeed, it was lucky for them that I didn’t have a camera phone, or they would have been awakened to incoming photos at four in the morning – beep beep beep, look, the linen’s in bloom!)
Moments later I was pedalling away, waved off by a hooting owl, greeted by an enormous hare flying through the fields, wrapped in silence until suddenly – whoosh! – I almost fell off the bike in shock as something shot past.
It was a team of cyclists. A very big team, a whole club out on a dawn run. Sheathed in multicoloured Lycra, they flew past like arrows, hundreds of them it seemed, green, red, yellow and purple, all grinning at my little old Raleigh.
‘Bonjour madame’ – b’jour – b’jour – b’jour.’ Every last one of them said hello, fortunately not seeming to expect individual replies as I waved back, laughing as they streamed away into the distance. France loves cycling, especially on Sundays, but I’d had no idea they did it in such numbers at such an unearthly hour, sweating, helmeted, legs pumping like pistons.
Such muscles! And was it really possible to get that thin? They looked like a flurry of whippets as they receded into the distance. Pedalling on, savouring the pure air, I plunged deeper into the flax-filled landscape, bouncing along unmade tracks, realising for the first time that flax grows shoulder-high, that the petals are heart-shaped, that the undergrowth is a deep tangle of lime-green tendrils. Blue heaven, indeed … for a long while I met nobody, thought of nothing, simply enjoying the rhythm of the whirring wheels, picking up the distant sound of a church bell, then another, tolling across the fields as the sun hauled itself out of bed and high into the sky.
Dawn! I hadn’t been up at dawn for years, except to totter out of a taxi from an occasional party or stagger to the airport for some red-eye flight. Dawn had certainly never been a voluntary option for getting up, much less going out … yet here I was, loving it. All alone, in the middle of nowhere, feeling more awake and alive than I had for years. Here and there, where the fields of flax gave way to dairy farming, cows lay folded on their foreleg
s, serenely chewing the cud, their fringes falling into their eyes, little black Friesian heifers and massive white Limousin bulls, all peacefully munching the meadow flowers. It was like cycling through a film by Jean-Luc Godard, only minus Gérard Dépardieu. (Dépardieu normally appears in every French film, there seems to be a law that says they can’t make one without him.)
And then suddenly – oh my God! – two vast Doberman dogs, barking and slavering, galloping the length of a wooden fence, their fangs inches from my legs. Cycling in flat, pretty Normandy is a joy, but it’s a joy much diluted by the guard dogs who have, apparently, all done assertiveness-training courses. Bengal tigers could hardly sound more savage or look more terrifying. Hastily, I pedalled on, my heart pounding as I hit Olympic speed.
Eventually, calm was restored and, a few miles on, I came to a chateau, grey and stately, surrounded by a sweeping lawn, turrets rising from its roof, fading wisteria swagging every window. Normandy is festooned with wisteria in early summer, swathed and scented in it, its flowers sometimes white but more often mauve, giving the landscape the blurred look of a palette on which an artist has been mixing colours. I’d plant some wisteria myself, I thought, if it weren’t so very slow-growing: if you want a mature one, you need to plant it when you’re five.
Curiously, I got off the bike and approached the chateau. Clearly it belonged, like so many others, to wealthy Parisiens, their 75-reg yellow Beetle parked in the drive (plus, probably, a couple of discreet black Mercedes in the garage.) The shutters were open, indicating early risers within, and a white canvas gazebo stood on the lawn, sheltering a table on which a white tablecloth was draped for breakfast. Slowing alongside the railings for a closer view, I could see every ingredient of a tourism brochure: the pot of jam (apricot, no doubt), the careless jug of pink roses, the silver coffee pot and – as I watched – madame emerging in a languid dressing gown, ruffled and trailing, baguette in hand. Transfixed, I waited for Gérard Dépardieu to appear behind her.