A Letter from Paris

by Louisa Deasey

  Without anywhere to be or rush, we sat there in the sunshine, served by a gracious maître d’, who also discussed the photos — taken of Australians under her restaurant’s plane tree — in French. Josephine and her husband arrived, joining in the examination. I learned which ones were taken on the island of Port Cros. Raphaël pointed to the upstairs section of the restaurant to show where dad had lounged in the sun seventy years earlier, and explained that the grape vines in my favourite photo were on the track behind us.

  I felt an unfurling as I sat and ate with these beautiful yet familiar strangers.

  This is what life could be like, if I wanted it.

  Sometimes acceptance is harder than effort — like the train ticket from Clém, let it be easy, Lou.

  As the entrees were delivered and eagerly shared around the table — salmon pâté, cheesy slices of bruschetta, marinated and roast vegetables, all of it fresh and full of goodness — I asked about Port Cros.

  ‘Can I catch a boat there, like dad did?’

  Serious looks around the table, and Josephine translated.

  ‘The ferry doesn’t run until spring. It’s still the last days of winter.’

  But how could this be winter? I thought, looking at the blue sky and feeling a warming breeze from the beach close by.

  Before lunch was served, the maître d’ brought a large freshly caught fish, uncooked, for Raphaël to inspect. Cooked, it came out with a similar fanfare. The maître d’ deboned and descaled the fish, dishing up our individual portions and delivering a perfect bowl of salad and another of bread to the table. Wine was poured, rosé. And more water. In Melbourne, this kind of service would be called ‘fine dining’, but we were just in a simple bistro in a little village. A hamlet, really. No wonder dad wrote so much about French food.

  I refused dessert, feeling full, but regretted my decision when I saw the obvious pleasure my companions were taking in their giant bowls of tiramisu and crème brûlée.

  After lunch, Josephine had a new offer, and, free from my anxious overwhelm of the day before, I was open and ready to accept.

  ‘Would you like to come for a drive to Bormes? I can show you the view from the mountains, and we can see the little villages. You don’t have a car, and it would be a pity for you not to see down from the mountain.’

  Saint Clair was so, so beautiful. Quaint. Unpretentious. A little fishing village, perhaps only busy in the summer.

  As we drove up the hill, slowing down to pass what looked like a building in the throes of restoration, Josephine explained that it had once been the home of Théo van Rysselberghe. With the help of Ivor, Raphaël was turning it into a gallery as part of the Chemin des Peintres.

  Ivor and Raphaël were perhaps the most perfect finders of my ‘message in a bottle’, as Raphaël had first referred to it. They honoured history, they treasured art, and they worked hard to preserve that feeling in Saint Clair that dad had felt when he first came there.

  As the church bell rang on the hour (and ten minutes later ‘in case you forget’, joked Josephine), with La Villa Aucassin and Les Sables D’Or behind us in the rear-view mirror, we wound our way up the mountains of Bormes, the same road dad had driven in his MG decades earlier.

  ‘I moved here with my husband, from Paris, ten years ago,’ Josephine explained as we drove. ‘It was a risk, moving here, but Paris was too busy, and look — it’s so much better, to live here.’

  It really was. Sunshine and light and peace and quiet.

  ‘We go back for the exhibitions, of course …’

  I understood the choices dad had made, what he’d risked and ‘wasted’ in order to stay — and return — to France.

  I will bring every penny I have from Australia and live here in Europe … ‘Oh if the heart be sick it is to old countries you must go.’

  This place was so beautiful, it was full of the kind of gentleness and warmth that burned grief from your skin.

  Australia had sunshine and sea, but this was something different. A patina of old and new, past and present, an honouring of family and a sense of personal history, which combined to form the perfect present. Being in that space, driving up the mountains of Bormes with Josephine, felt like a piano song I’d always remember how to play, an instinct, the steps to a dance — my body or my senses had been there before, and I would never completely leave.

  Up we went to the ancient park and mountains, forests full of granite that dropped steeply below, stretching out to sea under a clear sky that reached all the way across to Corsica. It was a perfect day.

  A crowded car of Italian tradesmen wished us a cheery Ciao! as we let them pass on a narrow point, and Josephine knew them, like she appeared to know everyone.

  ‘Because we are so close to Italy, everyone says Ciao,’ she explained.

  The mountains wrapped around each other like padded cushions flanking the bigger area of Lavandou, but the view when we reached the top was forest greens and oceanic blue. Oh, the stories this land contained …

  I remembered one of dad’s diaries, when he’d stayed in Saint Clair the first time, for two months in 1948, recovering from tubercular pleurisy and finally being able to run.

  Walked with Al through sides of nearby Gorges, passed along tracks through many vineyards — and all the workers — I’m not yet used to saying peasants — greeted us and wished us ‘bon promenade’ and again as we returned. On the way back another asked us to come in for a drink, and we joined him in a spotless kitchen.

  Above us, a painting. He talked of Dante, being an Italian as so many are about here, and offered us a drink from a plain bottle an excellent liquor. It tasted unusual. I asked from what part of France it came. Gesturing towards the vines just on the side window he told me he himself had made it.

  Apart from the vines, they grow potatoes, artichokes, beans and peas here in Saint Clair. Occasionally great lorries grind the back road behind the Inn and emerge after some time, laden with cases. I have only just realized that they are cases of flowers.

  What a country.

  Dipping and weaving until we got to an ancient church, Josephine pulled into an ancient village tucked into the mountains. ‘Bormes les Mimosas,’ she announced, letting out her little dog and locking the car. We were apparently taking her dog for a walk.

  An ancient village with its own, unique, deeper church bell ringing, this was, I soon remembered, the place dad had described coming to a Sunday dance in the square.

  ‘So this place has music and is popular on Sundays with artists,’ said Josephine, pointing to a large bistro that overlooked the village below.

  I knew, immediately, it was where dad had sat with Roy Campbell, who told Catha tales in his South African accent …

  Roy in the little square in Bormes with the jazzy pasodoble music coming out of the big café behind us, yellow flags of the square, the lights of Lavandou and Saint Clair, where I’m living below down by the sea and Roy talking in his fantastic accent looking happy with his coat off and the smog of London out of his throat, telling Catha tales, saying … ‘we can have another pastis and it’s on me …’

  Around us were medieval houses overgrown with bougainvillea flowers, and we took the little dog down a street with ancient walkways that revealed lounging cats, hidden in the archways. Peach-coloured rooftops, passageways to secret paths, shutter windows and doorways that were masterpieces in their own right. Stone pathways led to thatch-roofed houses and a hidden maison des artistes.

  My feet grew sore in the hot sun. Strangely, I’d only packed ballet flats, leaving my sneakers back in Paris.

  ‘What size shoe are you?’ asked Josephine, wanting every little detail of my stay to be good, offering to drive home to get me her espadrilles.

  But our feet were different sizes, and it didn’t matter to me, anyway.

  After a dizzyingly beautiful afternoon exploring the mou
ntains of Bormes and the Forêt du Dom, Josephine delivered me back to my hotel at sundown. I remembered I’d forgotten to ask to stay another night.

  ‘Ma chambre — is it possible to stay another night?’

  ‘C’est possible,’ he repeated back.

  C’est possible. They were always saying that, to me.

  I thought of something else.

  ‘Ah, do you know if there is a boat to Port Cros … maybe tomorrow?’

  ‘C’est possible,’ he replied, just as ambiguously. It seemed that was all I needed to know, for now, and he would investigate in his own time. I left it at that.

  I sat on my balcony overlooking the citrus trees, writing in my journal and planning a new life, one where I could live in a place like this, one full of peace and beauty and the time to savour all of it. Where I needn’t be ashamed of my obsession with writing and my own family history. One where things were possible, if I just let them be.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Port Cros

  The hotel was quiet in the morning, and I realised I’d overslept, padding down to a silent kitchen and no background of French giggles. I wandered about the eating area, unlocking the door to the courtyard on the wall to the ancient church, feeling as though I was staying in a summerhouse owned by friends.

  Eventually, the man came downstairs, stretching and full of apologies, and brewed coffee for us both to have our morning bowl.

  ‘Du café,’ he said drowsily, placing a large pot on my little table. But then — the loud ring of the phone upstairs, chatter in French, the woman now at my table, a piece of paper before her.

  ‘Ah — so — I spoke with the — how you say — boat? — and there is one leaving in ten minutes, from Le Lavandou.’ She tapped her watch. ‘It will take you too long to walk along the path. I can drive you?’

  I threw my delicious untouched baguettes and assorted cheeses in a bag, rushing upstairs for the rest of my things.

  ‘You have cream?’ said the woman as we walked to her car. ‘For your face?’

  Was she checking that I’d moisturised?

  ‘And a towel, for swimming? And some money to buy lunch? And swimsuit? And a bottle of water?’

  ‘Oui —’ I raced back to get the towel.

  We were halfway to Le Lavandou when I realised that by cream she meant sunscreen. It didn’t matter. I was in France, where they still have an ozone in the sky above, and the bright sun isn’t the cancerous threat it is back in Australia.

  Besides, I pictured a quaint little cafe on the water, where I’d sit with my journal under the shade. I set off for my trip wearing leggings, a T-shirt, and ballet flats. A strange outfit, certainly. The woman from the hotel pointed at my ‘dancing shoes’ with a look of confusion.

  At the little jetty, we all loaded up onto a large ferry, soon speeding across the water. Bronzed French and Italians clad in white surrounded me, and, when we stopped at Île du Levant, there were giggles and talk of the ‘nudists’ who lived on the island.

  Levant, which was used between the wars for naval gunnery practice, acquired some notoriety after the last war when a colony of nudists settled there. They may still be there for all I know …

  Four cats languidly wandered up the jetty to greet the handful of visitors.

  It took almost an hour to cross the blue expanse and make it to Port Cros, and as we slowly docked in the little port I saw a few men painting the exteriors of a shop, but no movement besides.

  I’d never been to an island on my own before, but I wasn’t afraid. Just excited.

  Port Cros was the island where Aldington had holidayed with D.H. Lawrence for a fortnight in 1928, returning numerous times after, particularly with dad. Dad had, it seemed, travelled many times to the island with Aldington and Al and the Duttons and others in those summers in Saint Clair in the 1940s, even though he got seasick.

  Raphaël, just a day before, had identified the small rowboat in many of our photos. ‘Monsieur Gigonet’, as written in dad’s diaries, would merely examine the sky before deciding if it was safe to leave Plage de Saint Clair.

  Frieda [Lawrence’s wife] and Lorenzo [Lawrence himself] had come down to the coast in 1928, searching for a climate to help his recovery. Richard asked them to stay with him on one of the islands off the coast and we went out in a fisherman’s boat to see the place … Time to visit Port Cros with the good Monsieur Gigonet, whose fishing boat is housed at the end of the little bay of Saint Clair.

  A fishing boat. The waters had been choppy in my luxury high-speed ferry, and I’d had to cling to the seats in front of me, sometimes, just to avoid a fall. Dad had come here in a rowboat. And he got seasick.

  It would have taken hours.

  The first thing I noticed, as the ferry docked in Port Cros, was an ancient fort, up a steep hill.

  Port Cros had been the prey of Moorish pirates for centuries, a rocky, wooded islet preserved by the government from development. We anchored in the little harbor, and Al and Richard climbed up to see the Vigie, the watchtower place where he had put up the Lawrences.

  There was a post office, a tourist information office, and a strip of magasins being painted or built, I wasn’t quite sure — but all looked très fermé.

  The ferry wouldn’t come back to collect me until five that evening. I had my notebook and pen, and bathers for a swim, and I pictured lots of nice slow saunters in the sun between delicious delicacies.

  I set off to find coffee in one of the shops.

  My favourite photo of dad from the island, I’d first found in Geoff Dutton’s memoir, Out in the Open. Head back in laughter, two friends across, all sitting at a wooden picnic table with two jolly-looking fishermen serving wine and soup from a giant breadboard, the background was a forest. It was a bouillabaisse picnic described in dad’s French memoir.

  I’d reread the passage in my hotel room the night before.

  In the early morning, as we move out of the shelter of the point, the smooth sea is dotted with dark shapes, Lavandou fishermen returning from their night’s work. Some have been out to the lobster pots, others have been netting all the various fish of the Mediterranean: conger, mullet, rascasse, squid, loup-de-mer, cod and the crustacean. Ah! The crustacean. On these the success of the bouillabaisse depends, and Monsieur Gigonet heads to intercept the boats … shouts are exchanged in broad patois; a bucket of brilliant-coloured little fish is handed over the side. Sea-spiders, shrimp, scampi and prawns and lobsters … the jewels of the colourful bouillabaisse.

  I’d since found a matching set of picnic photos, almost as though photos were taken with every bite of the feast. In one, Monsieur Gigonet, with his scarf and his fishing cap just so, is grinning widely and clutching wine in a carafe, as dad dishes himself up more bread.

  Bouillabaisse-s! is shouted again. Under the shade of an umbrella pine what was once a table is made to serve again with a few old boxes for seats. From somewhere Monsieur Gigonet produces a huge cork platter, over which the fish, potatoes and onions are laid; the whole has been dyed yellow by the saffron, with brilliant patches of scarlet from the little crabs. If only there had been some way of cooling the wine … but the other fisherman is doing something with a length of cord near the old wall … up come three bottles of wine, looped together, and fresh as if they had been packed in ice.

  As I centred myself on the island, which was quiet except for the sounds of a few men hammering nails onto a wall somewhere close, I looked around for the cafe I’d hoped for. A Frenchman with a paintbrush in one hand and a cigarette in another wandered towards me, curiously.

  ‘Ah … je cherche une café … ?’

  ‘Ah, non.’ He looked désolée. ‘Tous fermés.’ He shrugged and turned as if to display.

  ‘Pas de magasins?’ I double-checked, repeating quietly to the growing gathering of curious and désolée locals now walking to meet me.
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  ‘Je cherche du café?’ I made a motion for drinking coffee.

  ‘Ah-ah.’ A chatter of French. Some pointing. A shout.

  ‘JOELLE!!!!’ a man bellowed, shattering the quiet (for all the men had stopped hammering to look). A small, suntanned woman emerged quickly from a cottage, marching across.

  ‘Oui?’

  More chatter in French, some pointing and talk of coffee. I gathered I was to follow her. Soon, we were at the doors to her cottage, in her immaculate kitchen; I was ordered to asseyez vous, so I sat down at her table.

  A plate of biscuits was placed in front of me, a bowl of sugar cubes, and a steaming hot cup of espresso.

  ‘Êtes vous américain?’

  ‘Ah, non. Je suis australien.’

  ‘Ah! Le kangaroo!’ she said cheerily, running off to answer her phone in a nearby room.

  So I sat in this sweet little kitchen on an ancient island and sipped Joelle’s espresso. It wasn’t the cafe I’d pictured, but it was somehow better.

  What do you do on an ancient island all day when the ferry apparently won’t be back until five o’clock and nothing is open?

  I just walked and thought.

  Walking alone to remote places gives one a feeling of ownership, dad had written.

  I walked and walked in my ballet flats, up forest tracks and down cliff edges to secluded inlets. I swam in the ocean in a little beach on my own and ate my breakfast baguette filled with delicious cheeses from the shade of a tree overlooking the cliff edge to the deep blue. It was my island, that day, and I didn’t meet a soul once I’d wandered a few paths away from the harbour.

  I climbed to the edge of the island, which overlooked a rocky point that made me dizzy with its drama, dramatic cuts of cliff on the windy side of the island contrasting wildly with the softness of the protected bays. The vertigo I felt, standing on the edge of endless blue, feeling I’d never be found if the wind blew any stronger, had me dancing in my ballet flats back to the known path.