by Liz Ryan
But it wasn’t Dépardieu. It was another Doberman, rocketing straight towards me, snarling and drooling in such a frenzy that I seized the bike and fled, madame’s voice carrying on the air behind me. ‘Don’t worry! He’s only a pet. Perfectly harmless! Can’t get over the railings!’
It was nice of her, considering that I’d been snooping, but the dog’s snout was already level with the spikes as it flailed to get out. In a flash, I realised why French cyclists are all such boy racers. They need to be. No wonder the crime rate is so low.
Normandy is big-sky country and I intended to explore all five départments before venturing further afield: west to Brittany, east to Picardy, south to the Loire, ‘where the sun starts’. But it couldn’t have been any sunnier here, which left me somehow sidetracked, unable to get beyond the beach or, in the cooler evenings, as far as the bike would take me. Without the slightest effort, or even thought, I’d lost six kilos in six weeks, my skin was glowing and I was feeling ten years younger. In the heat, meals were minimal: melons scooped out and filled with raspberries, salads composed of whatever looked good at the market – curly lettuce, corn, radishes, chicken, cucumber, juicy tomatoes, it scarcely mattered what.
Nothing seemed to matter. Every evening, the air was pungent with the aroma of merguez sausages sizzling on barbecues, smoke curling through the trees of the neighbours’ houses. Sometimes, missing my friends, I wondered if they might invite me in for a beer, but they never did. Never mind. Later, when I got round to it, I would throw a little house-warming party … vaguely, I was conscious that in the autumn I should start making a more serious effort to build a social circle, but for now I just couldn’t seem to get up the energy. In fact, it was a challenge even to pick up the phone to the people I knew back in Ireland. I seemed to be turning into some kind of happy hermit.
Meanwhile, the bike beckoned. Because there are no hedges in upper Normandy, you can see for miles as you cycle along, the horizon is huge and the roads are virtually empty. Four times the size of Britain, with the same population, France considers itself underpopulated (the government constantly begging people to have more babies), and the sense of space is almost swamping. After about eight in the evening, not a soul stirs in the villages, the silence reverberates and you wonder, where do they all go?
Certainly not to the pub, which closes around seven. Nor to the shops: ditto. No kids hang out on the streets, no televisions blare, there is absolutely nothing of the Spanish paseo about it. In summer, the Normans simply sit out in their back gardens, tucked up leafy laneways out of sight, murmuring amongst themselves as they polish off the last of the rosé. Parents, children, friends, grandparents … the French love a good family gathering, but it’s very rarely noisy. As I cycled along, weaving my way amidst the duck ponds, the sheep, the geese and the cows, it was almost like looking at a still life, a tableau frozen in time. Would it always be thus? Or would France, some day, wake up with a bang? I was reminded of the Ireland of my childhood, but look how that had changed … despite its timeless aura, could France really stay suspended in aspic?
Selfishly, I wished it could, and would. It was utterly beautiful and, day by day, I was falling more and more in love with it. Out in the countryside, the stripy longhouses were drenched in apple blossom; in the snoozing hamlets, only the occasional chugging tractor broke the silence as the farmers harvested their hay all night long, the somnolent sound of it a veritable lullaby. In the fishing villages, things were livelier on summer nights, yachts and trawlers coming and going, tourists eating out around the harbours where you could, if you wanted, get a beer any time up to ten or eleven.
But France is not by nature nocturnal. Because of the shutters, house lights are not even visible, and much of the municipal lighting is switched off at midnight. The nights are very dark, netted with stars; after a while, I learned to identify Orion, the Dagger, the Plough, the diamond-bright planets of Mars and Venus, and many more (probably including a few satellites by mistake). Gazing up at it all, I felt that same falling-in-love feeling I’d had when I first heard the music of Serge Reggiani, and wondered whether France might be the one really rewarding, lasting love of my life.
When I stopped star-gazing I binged on the view of the church steeple at twilight, the hazy fields at dawn, and the daylong muffled thwack of tennis balls. I loved returning from a long cycle in the scarlet dregs of sunset, sunburnt, aching, ready to drop into the deepest sleep I’d ever experienced. (The country air was having a startlingly soporific effect on visiting friends, too, one of whom sat dreamily down one day on a non-existent chair.) I loved the growing feeling of owning my own life, of establishing a rhythm dictated not by deadlines but by nature. So far, France was doing exactly what it said on the tin.
But two small jobs had to be done. Every evening, I had to phone at least one friend in Ireland, because it is vitally important to keep up your contacts. One of the first things any emigrant over the age of twenty-five learns is that the friends of a lifetime can never be replicated, and should be treasured. The calls were funny: apparently Irish weather had improved out of all recognition since I’d left. Instantly, everybody informed me what a ‘glorious’ day it was. Ireland and France seemed inexplicably locked in competition to see who had the hottest, sunniest, most fabulous weather, Ireland was winning hands down and I soon learned to keep Normandy’s thirty-five degrees out of the conversation. After all, if it was hotter now, it might well be a lot colder come winter. People often enquired solicitously whether I was missing ‘home’, and it seemed so churlish to say ‘no’ that I dissimulated. But the truth was that I wasn’t: there were simply too many new things clamouring for my attention. Despite their languor, the days seemed to zip by like bullets, even if I couldn’t explain where they all went.
My other job was to watch the news on French television. No matter how remote reality seemed, no matter that my interest in bombs, tornadoes, crashes and crimes seemed to be flagging alarmingly: it had to be done, because television is a sure-fire way of learning, or improving, your French. Tons of vocabulary, clearly pronounced and illustrated – you can’t go wrong. Doggedly, I listened to the newsreaders bleating on, picking up all kinds of useful new terms like ‘armoured’ and ‘bankrupt’ and ‘up in smoke’. Much of southern France was indeed up in smoke that summer, razed by forest fires – something not to be overlooked if you are thinking of going to live in the south. (In winter, torrential floods take over – one Irish friend had to be winched from his rented house by helicopter.)
And so to bed. Oh my God, I forgot to put on the burglar alarm!
No you didn’t. You don’t have a burglar alarm.
But how can anyone live without one? In Ireland, I couldn’t.
But you can here. Nobody has one. So just relax and go to sleep.
And so I did go to sleep, and did relax, and did gradually forget all about the burglar alarm, lulled instead by the hooting of an owl and the creaking of the upstairs floorboards, which despite the surveyor’s dire predictions were still stoutly holding up.
Eh bien. So far, so good. The attic was proving resilient – unlike the one in the house bought by some Irish friends who came to visit, fell in love with the area, and promptly bought a house near Etretat. As monsieur was cooking supper one evening there was a crash overhead, and he looked up to see his wife’s leg plunging like a dagger through the kitchen ceiling.
5.
Bag Lady
I have been very bad. I have disgraced my country. I have been nicked for shoplifting. Nicked for nicking a jerrycan. And nicked again for vagrancy. Nicked twice, in one day.
I didn’t mean to do it, your honour. All I meant to do was go out and buy a car, because no matter how bohemian a life you think you’re living in deepest France, certain practicalities remain. Obviously, one needs a car to go whizzing round France to have one’s first wrangles with the 89,000 officials in charge of one’s phone, water, electricity and so forth. So it was time to return the rental
car and buy one: only that presented the problem of how to reach the car showroom to pick up one’s spanking new Renault.
Luckily, my Irish friend Sheila, who’s married to a Frenchman, was crucially helpful in volunteering to drive me to the car showroom. So we returned the rental car and, checking to see if I’d left anything in it, I found this big red plastic jerrycan in the boot. I’d bought it a few days earlier in a hypermarket, intending to fill it with petrol for the lawnmower, and then forgotten it. Unused, it was still tagged, barcode and all. So I took it out and tucked it under my arm, and we set off to collect the new car. Only the car wasn’t ready, was it? Wouldn’t be ready for another two hours, would it?
This presented a difficulty for Sheila, who had urgent business elsewhere. So, very kindly, she dropped me at a nearby shopping mall only five hundred metres away, where I could amuse myself until the lovely new car was ready.
So off she went and in I went to the vast hypermarket, the same one where I’d bought the jerrycan three days before. This time I didn’t buy anything. I simply browsed for an hour or two – the place was the size of Laois – before leaving empty-handed.
Well, not quite empty-handed, because I was still carrying the bright red jerrycan, albeit without much thinking about it, as it had by now become part of the picture. Which was why a security man raced after me as I left the premises, roaring and bawling.
‘Eh, you! Oi! Stop!’
Huh? Who, moi?
Yes, me. Next thing there were two of them, one growling into a walkie-talkie as if I’d tried to assassinate the president, the other suggesting I had failed to pay for my purchase. Oh no, I explained, I bought it three days ago, actually … but naturally he didn’t believe me, since the wretched thing still had its price tag and bar code on. (I know, not smart.) Since people don’t normally return to a shop with the same thing they bought last Tuesday, tote it round the store, and then carry it back out, this tale cut little ice with security.
Never mind, I said, I paid by credit card. Here, let me show you the receipt. But what with trying to juggle the jerrycan, my handbag, my wallet and a fistful of receipts, I dropped everything and all the bits of paper (including a few hundred euro, I might add) blew away on the unluckily stiff breeze. So, after something of a pantomime and a bit of a breakdown in entente cordiale, I was frogmarched back into the shop and up to the manager’s office, feeling like some nitwit on Candid Camera.
It was a long and surprisingly gruelling interrogation. Not far off Gestapo standard, actually. Finally, I was let go on the basis of being Irish – an apparently mitigating factor although I’m not sure why – on condition I never nick another big red jerrycan. Feeling somewhat drained, I then set off for the car showroom … only to find a bridge in the way. A short bridge, but a very high one, with lots of traffic teeming miles below.
Well, I have vertigo, don’t I? Really bad vertigo. It’s not my fault and I can’t help it. I just can’t walk across bridges, is all. I did try to cross this one, but as soon as I set foot on it, it started to sway and I got all dizzy. Couldn’t continue, even though I could see the car premises from where I stood.
So there I remained, immobilised, clutching my jerrycan, conscious of not looking my best in the howling gale and lashing rain. After a while, it dawned on me that the only way to get across this bridge was to hitch. To stick out my thumb and look pitiful (not difficult), in the hope that some kind soul might pick me up and ferry me across.
Eventually, someone did pick me up. Only it wasn’t a kind soul, it was the cops. What was I doing? Where was I going? Didn’t I know it was both dangerous and illegal to hitch here? Name, rank, serial number, please? Feeling an absolutely prize idiot, I explained my dilemma.
Next thing – I swear I’m not making this up – they bundled me into the back of their Black Maria (or ‘salad basket’, as the French call it), as if I’d been caught planting a sizzling stick of dynamite in the Élysée Palace. Very scary. And then they drove me across the bridge, to be sprung from captivity right outside the office of the salesman who was selling me the car. Unfortunately, its wall was glass, so he saw the cops, uh, helping me out. With my jerrycan. He did not look like a happy camper. He even stopped talking on the mobile phone to which he had been surgically attached since … well, since birth, I think. His jaw dropped and I could guess what was racing through his mind: ‘My customer is a bag lady whose cheque has bounced … Interpol … long history of fraud, vagrancy, theft …’
Oh no, I hastened to reassure him, I could explain the red jerrycan. And the cops and the salad basket. Really. Finally, the police released me into his clutches, and I eagerly went to take possession of my new car. Ah, mais non, madame. Stop right there. There is a tiny problem.
Oh no, what now?
My paperwork. Alas, the 876 documents necessary to the purchase of a car in France had been turned down by the local gendarmerie. No, no reason had been given; perhaps because I’m Irish (a mitigating factor only minutes earlier)? Or perhaps the fact of simply not being French is now a crime in its own right? Yes, my application for a carte grise was accompanied by my passport, driving licence, residence permit, insurance certificate and deeds of the new house, but this has not been sufficient. I must have forgotten to include my late tortoise’s death certificate.
So now what? Here I am a hundred kilometres from home, with no transport. What am I to do – move in and live here in the showroom?
Well. Hmm. The salesman thought about it. And then inspiration struck. Why not nip into a different town and present my documents at the sous-préfecture there, perhaps it would be more accommodating? If I hurried, that was, because the nearest alternative sous-préfecture would be closing in … oh, in fifteen minutes actually. I pointed out that – albeit motivated as I was – I might have some difficulty in walking eleven kilometres in fifteen minutes. Briefly, we gazed at each other, perplexed. And then, whipping out a set of keys, he said he would lend me a car to go there. Hurry, hurry!
So I put the boot down. I fairly blazed a track to that sous-préfecture and, when the guard on duty started to close the gates in my face, I said some regrettably unladylike things. Yes, in French. I hadn’t realised I’d got so fluent so fast. But then, it hardly mattered, since everyone seemed to think I was a bag lady anyway.
Inside, the clerk looked at her watch and said oh, what a pity. Sorry, too late, just closing. Whereupon I explained that I was stranded and, if she did not process my paperwork now, I would unfortunately be obliged to torch France. Yes, set it alight and watch with glee while the whole wretched shambles burned to a cinder.
She said she could get me arrested for using threatening language. I said I’d already been arrested. She started to look anxious. I said I would sit down on the floor and stay the night. Stay as many nights as it might take. After all, I had nowhere else to go and no way of getting there.
Oh, very well then. She would let me in just this once, ‘but don’t make a habit of it, madame’.
No, I don’t buy a car every day, actually, so I am unlikely to make a habit of visiting sous-préfectures. Finally, with that pained look every French clerk perfects over the years, the woman processed my papers and, at last, I got my car. Driving home in it, shattered, I felt cheated of the joy of a first drive in a new car, and had a kind of premonitory feeling: would every dealing of a bureaucratic nature prove as arduous as this one? (Yes, was to be the resounding answer.)
Next day, however, a happier prospect beckoned. I was invited to lunch by my estate agent Pierre Yves at his rustic home, the first French home to which I had been invited. He presented his charming family, adorable miniature macaroons and elegant Earl Grey tea, tablecloths billowed in the sunlight, infants gambolled and a delightful time was had by all – until I went to leave, got into the car, and found it wouldn’t start. In all the flurry of the previous day, I hadn’t registered a word the salesman had said about the immobiliser, or what you had to do to deactivate it. The engine was stone
dead and the car sat on Pierre Yves’s manicured lawn on strike, refusing to budge.
No, you don’t want to hear the rest. Honestly. Trust me. I am to be trusted, actually – as I assured the next policeman to pull me in, barely a week later.
This time, the crime was unarguable. Driving without a seatbelt. The flic took out his notebook, and I took out my explanation. As I was reversing out of a parking space, you see, barely a hundred metres back, a motorbike scorched up behind the car and gave me such a fright I forgot to put on the seatbelt …
Pen poised, the cop considered. And then spotted a second crime. An ‘IRL’ sticker on the back window. French cars are not supposed to carry foreign stickers. Between that and the seatbelt, the fine was rocketing rapidly and yes, they do take credit cards.
‘But,’ I pleaded, ‘I’m Irish’ (uncertain by now whether this was an advantage or a handicap.)
Whereupon the cop looked hard at me and said something unexpected. ‘Well, you’ll be watching the match tonight then, will you?’
Eh? What match? Desperately, I nodded.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘If France beats Ireland, I’ll let you off. But if Ireland beats France, you’ll have to come to the gendarmerie tomorrow morning with two hundred euro, madame.’
Which is how I treacherously came to pray for the defeat of my own country, and discovered that yes, prayer does work.
Some time has now gone by. I’ve got a part-time job teaching English, which has been great for getting to know people locally. Everyone says they now recognise the little green Renault on sight, with its ‘IRL’ sticker merrily waving from the back window. (Why? I never thought I had a chauvinistic bone in my body, but there you go: moving abroad teaches you things about yourself you never suspected. Plus, the sticker is vital for identifying the car in those hypermarket car parks the size of Kerry which, as I have discovered, can contain thousands of identical Renaults.)