A House at the End of the Track

by Michelle Lawson

  In all of the other interviews with couples, I’d sat there patiently while they competed to get their words in, talking over each other and often disagreeing. But at first these two barely moved beyond one-liners, batting just a few words back and forth and agreeing with each other. I knew there wouldn’t be an invitation to try their spaghetti Bolognese, nor to join them at the best pizza place in town.

  One of the first things they did was to try and place me socially, doubtless because they were aware that I came from a valley that had a reputation for free and easy growing of cannabis. ‘I think over at Massat you have smoking parties, don’t you?’ asked Ray.

  ‘Smoking parties!’ I laughed.

  ‘Yes, in the Massat valley,’ added Carol. I conceded that some locals might have been growing the stuff as part of their alternative lifestyle, although privately I neither knew nor cared. I went on to describe the yurt building enterprise and Ray was scornful.

  ‘Building yurts – what, as a business venture? Have they got vehicular access?’ Not exactly. I explained the scramble up the mountainside and the basic facilities on arrival. Ray shook his head. ‘There’s getting back to nature and getting back to the Stone Age.’ I smiled and added that they nevertheless had a steady stream of visitors. ‘Are they druggies?’ laughed Ray.

  ‘Now now,’ admonished Carol, ‘you’re making assumptions about the Massat valley.’

  ‘But they’re all hippies there!’ said Ray. I didn’t see much point in correcting him.

  Ray began to open up when I asked how they saw themselves in five years’ time. ‘I doubt we’ll be here,’ he said. ‘Ariège was never a long-term move; it’s just a stepping stone. France wasn’t my first choice.’ This surprised me. Where would he have preferred? ‘Far East, Canada, anywhere where there were more opportunities really, but we came here as Carol has family back in the UK.’

  So they’d wanted to make a move somewhere, but not especially to this corner of France, or even Europe. So why make a move in the first place? ‘We decided there’s got to be more to life than just seeing the kids for two weeks at Christmas and two weeks in the summer,’ he explained.

  I still didn’t really understand why they’d ended up here, and it turned out that their primary focus had been buying a business. They’d seen a tourism business up for sale and so the family had ended up here by chance. In terms of practicality it seemed both logical and illogical. In Ray’s view, Ariège provided an easier starting point to prepare them for more complicated moves in the future, a gentle way in to becoming a globally mobile family. ‘Now we won’t be fazed going anywhere else. At any time we can think we’ve had enough, let’s pack up and go somewhere else. It’s a stepping stone for the kids too, to be fluent in French and English, you can go anywhere. Next one’s Mandarin, I think.’

  On the other hand I was finding it difficult to see how this remote département could be a rational choice for a family with no real yearning to be living in France, especially when Carol described herself as “brain dead” nowadays. ‘I’ve gone from a full-on job using my brain cells, and I get here and I don’t feel I’ve got any brain cells anymore. There’s also a lack of control because of the language. I feel a lot more vulnerable here than I did in the UK.’

  The couple had come out relying on Ray’s school-level French, but after having a couple of attempts at lessons, they’d given up, because “real life gets in the way”. Carol insisted that they hadn’t used that as an excuse to be isolated. ‘The key is getting involved. All the way down the line we’ve got involved with village life, even when we weren’t speaking French at the beginning.’ But they didn’t seem to socialise much, and like some of the others they pinned that on the way they were, rather than any language barrier. ‘Even in the UK we didn’t have many friends. We just do our own thing, what we want, when we want.’

  I wondered what kind of contact they had with other Britons. ‘We don’t, do we?’ replied Ray.

  ‘Well, only those that we’ve sort of come across,’ added Carol. Yet they knew enough for Ray to give a scathing impersonation of British ignorance in the face of his own knowledge.

  ‘The Brits want nannying a lot more here,’ he said. ‘I asked Sue and John, who went back after being here 6 months, “Have you got your carte vitale sorted?” What’s a carte vitale?’

  He carried on mimicking the Brits, using a slow monotone to portray the cluelessness of their replies. ‘It’s like Bill and Ben down the road. “Have you got your carte vitale?” What’s one of them? “Have you sorted your insurance, ’cause if you build a house you’re legally required to have it insured.” Oh are we?’

  Ray and Carol made it clear that they weren’t like these others. Instead they’d utilised professionals so that everything related to the move was “done properly”. I knew that they’d used the British forums, asking questions about English-speaking services and generally advertising their presence, but they were circumspect about it. ‘I know of them, yeah,’ said Ray. ‘But I don’t go on them, to be honest.’

  ‘We’ve occasionally put questions on asking about doctors and dentists and stuff like that,’ added Carol, ‘but I’ve not been on them lately.’ There was no mention of what Elaine had perceived as advertising for friends.

  They were also careful to show that they appreciated the un-Dordogne-like character of the Ariège, where according to Ray, one in four inhabitants was English. ‘So you might as well stay in England,’ said Carol.

  I asked if they’d recommend the Ariège to British people.

  Carol laughed. ‘Probably not, otherwise it’ll end up like the Dordogne and that’s when it’ll lose its charm.’

  Ray was more cautious about encouraging the Brits. ‘It depends. The trouble is a lot of Brits come and they expect to be sitting around all day drinking red wine until sundown. And real life isn’t like that. Bills have got to be paid, you’ve got to get in the healthcare system, blah blah blah.’ It was the familiar contradiction between the dream and reality; people’s expectations versus what actually transpired. Running a tourist accommodation business, Ray had seen his fair share of holidaymakers wanting to uproot and live here. ‘They come out with rose-tinted glasses. They come out in holiday mode and then when real life hits them in the face, it isn’t easy.’

  The silences began to lengthen and I started to make a move, thanking them for their time. Through the window, the sun was just starting to lighten up the valley. Carol looked across. ‘When the sun’s out it’s absolutely gorgeous. It’s not so pleasant when it rains, and the winters are bleak. When we first arrived one of the women in the village, who speaks fluent English, said that even for the French, the test is to survive three winters here. If you do that, then you’ll stay. We’ve come through our third winter, so we’ll see.’

  Winter in the Pyrenees, where temperatures drop well below zero and the snow can fall for days on end, would certainly be a test for the English incomers, even though we’re used to moaning about the weather. According to Fralon, it was experiencing the first Dordogne winter that sent around one in six of the new arrivals scurrying back to England in their first year. Realising that they’d come to live in a village that hibernated for half the year, the Brits missed the pubs, the shops and the ability to communicate with more than a handful of compatriots. I expect that many former professionals, like Carol, would have longed for at least a few elements of their previous hectic but meaningful existence, just enough to tilt back a work–life balance that had gone slightly too far the other way.

  The following year, when I sat chatting with Lynn, I asked if she’d seen much of Ray and Carol. ‘Oh no,’ she said, ‘they’ve sold the business and bought one in the Dordogne instead. They missed being around English people.’

  The Language Problem

  It could have been a flippant, throwaway comment, but Ray’s claim that “real life gets in the way” of learning French
summed up a particular attitude towards the relative importance of being able to communicate in the local language. The incomers whom I’d met were a mixed bunch in terms of language skills; some came out speaking virtually no French, a few couples managed with one competent partner, and a handful were at intermediate or advanced level. Yet on the forum I’d noticed an assumption that the task of gaining competency in French would largely begin on arrival. It wasn’t a total reinforcement of the stereotype that the Brits are largely monolingual, but it didn’t fully contradict it either. Newcomers were advised by forum members to speak French – even bad French. One member brought in an anecdote to warn a newcomer that some other Brits moved into our village and were not well received as they spoke “no” French. They left after 3 months.

  It’s generally accepted that learning a new language as an adult isn’t easy, although the reasons for this haven’t been fully explained. There’s an ongoing debate between academics who view second language acquisition as a cognitive process, one that’s specific to the learner, and those who view the social context as a more significant factor in the success of learning a second language. It seems sensible to assume that both factors are at play, and in the case of the latter, the ease of reliance on an existing English-speaking community would explain the lack of progress experienced by some incomers.

  Another factor that interested me was that of motivation. Surely this would be a key factor for British incomers in France, since the move was (usually) deliberately chosen and planned, rather than forced; people had opted to leave the UK in search of a life that was better in some way. I wondered if perhaps some of the initial motivating factors, such as the anticipation of becoming part of the French community, had in some cases become disappointments that had gradually killed off the initial motivation. A few people talked about the French being friendly and polite but not really eager to foster deeper friendships with the incomers. Gerald had been an exception, but even he had been gloomy at the fact that he was unable to be completely himself in another language.

  The concept of acculturation – whereby incomers adopt the customs, values and behaviour of the host culture – seems very relevant here. Acculturation is a two-way process, with some choice available to the incomer as to what they are prepared to adapt to; Gerald was a good example of this, with his claim to dip in and out of French culture as he pleased. It’s never simply a case of culture being imposed by the host, although some governments do attempt to impose it; think of the attempts by the French to outlaw Muslim attire, and the UK government’s attempt to assess migrants’ knowledge of life in the UK.

  In terms of learning French, it’s more complicated, since that aspect of acculturation is affected by the degree of social and psychological distance between the English-speaking incomers and their French hosts. I’d seen clear evidence of social distance, where the ready availability of even a slender English-speaking network encouraged people to take the easier option of socialising in their mother tongue. And as I’d noted with Gail, psychological factors related to anxiety could inhibit less confident incomers from opening themselves up to what they saw as ridicule. In consequence, the less contact they have with the French, the less the opportunities for input, which is an important element of language learning.

  The online forum was exactly the kind of thing that reinforced social distance between the incomers and the local community, enabling the Brits to “pull up the drawbridge”, in the words of Kate Fox, and avoid the ordeal of face-to-face interaction in a foreign language. Even though the original Life in France, in English forum had died in 2011, a replacement had been set up in no time.

  For some, such as Pat and John, it was sufficient to learn on a need-to-know basis, and they seemed content with the level they’d achieved. In comparison, Elaine, used to being an organiser, must have felt handicapped by the language barrier, admitting that she found the pressure to succeed too much. As for Ray, he surely would have needed a decent level of French to run a business over here, but his relegation of language learning below the priority of “real life” suggested that his motivation was now flying at half-mast. Perhaps it was seen as not really worth his investment, being as France was a mere stepping stone before moving on to more exciting places.

  On the other hand, the idea that acculturation is a forced imposition on incomers seems laughable in British migration contexts. If anything, people saw it the other way round. Pat had talked about showing their French friends the delights of English food and the custom of Christmas crackers, all the while making sure that they didn’t come across as enforcing English culture on the French. ‘That isn’t imposing on them, it’s just showing them a little different quirk that we have; we’re not saying well, you’ve got to have crackers from now on.’ She insisted that their love of curry and fish and chips was limited to when they went back to England. ‘We love it but we don’t want to make it so we have that here, because it’s not right.’ The avoidance of imposition was right there in the language, in the very denial of having to have crackers at Christmas and making fish and chips readily available. It was an idea rooted within colonial times, one that was refusing to die as the Brits flocked to France.

  I’d met a researcher who’d studied British incomers on the Algarve who had looked closely at their motivations to learn Portuguese. Although they all paid lip service to the desirability of learning the language of the country, their motivation to actually learn it was, on the whole, low, with people claiming that “everyone speaks English”. The researcher, Kate Torkington, also drew attention to how the Brits themselves perceived the economic importance of English. English was viewed as the language with status, so people questioned why they would learn Portuguese when there was little value in learning it. One of the mantras that Torkington heard the Brits using was “we bring the money in”, showing how conscious they were of having economic power that brought benefits to the region. This, she felt, was used to underpin their monolingualism, as it was simply logical and legitimate to speak English. Once again, it brought to mind sentiments expressed during our colonial activities.

  Something approaching this could be seen in areas of France that had received a more substantial influx of British incomers. In Brittany, for example, the promotion of English language practices was creeping into areas where British incomers were seen as boosting the economy as opposed to being a nuisance. A study by French researcher Aude Etrillard noted how French-owned English-speaking services were beginning to target the Brits. There were guides in English that advised on settling in the area, and on opening guest house accommodation and other small businesses. As in the Ariège, some areas of Brittany have suffered depopulation, and the British influx was seen in some quarters as a welcome demographic route to economic growth.

  Compared with Brittany, the Ariège incomers don’t enjoy the privilege of using English in everyday contexts. Ariège, with its much smaller numbers of British incomers, makes little attempt to accommodate English speakers. Some of the people of working age I spoke with managed to get by with working for the British community; others had found employment as “the English speaker” in the estate agencies. Some had their own property or accommodation services, where they could muddle through in the event of having a French customer. Yet the Ariège promotes itself as a tourist destination, and English is the language of communication for more nationalities than just the British. The Ariège.com website does its bit by having an English version of some of its pages, so acknowledgement of the global economic opportunities related to English is creeping in, but slowly.

  The Legacy Of Vasconia

  Many of the Britons I spoke with blamed the broad regional accent for not being able to converse well with the local French, complaining that it was so different from the French they’d learned in the classroom. Even Gerald said, ‘I can’t join in with the patois, I don’t understand every word.’ Here in the Ariège, people were often surprised to find that one
did pronounce the final letters of place names. While in the north one would say “Massah” as opposed to sounding the final -t in Massat, here the /t/ was pronounced. Even French radio announcers got it wrong, much to Vincent’s amusement, as well as English broadcasters. I smiled at Jasmine Harman guiding viewers around “Massah” during an episode of A Place in the Sun and inviting Steve and Lisa to look at properties in the town of “Says”. Perhaps the programme producers were aware that the /x/ is pronounced in the name of Seix, and they altered it to avoid it sounding like a place of debauchery. But how many Brits then walked into estate agents asking for properties in “Says”? And even the accepted pronunciation wasn’t without its disputes. According to the Gasconha.com site, which promotes the older language of Gascon, a more authentic pronunciation of the /x/ would be as a ‘sh’ sound, as it would be in Catalan: “Seish”.

  I’d come to the Ariège aware that there was another, older language spoken here, one that was related to Catalan. I’d begun by thinking of it as “Occitan”. I’d been thrilled to see an inscription that was clearly not French – Enso mieu que soun pla – carved into the lintel over the front door of a nearby house where, until recently, an old Ariégeois had spent his later years at rest in front of the huge open hearth. This made me smile, since the inscription translated to something like Home is where I want to be. But I came to realise that I’d misunderstood the whole conception of the Occitan language, starting from a conversation with an English researcher I met at a linguistics conference. Every time I mentioned Occitan, he shook his head. ‘There’s not really an Occitan language,’ he repeated. ‘It’s just an umbrella term for a number of different language varieties. I’m studying the Prouvençal variety, but in Ariège you might be talking about Gascon.’ He was right.