by Susie Kelly
The gardienne at the campsite asked for our passports, and locked them firmly in a drawer. She had no change for the note we offered in payment of the camping fees. I suggested she kept the note, and gave us the change the following morning, but no, this wasn’t possible: we would have to bring her the exact amount in the morning before we left. There was absolutely no other way. In the meantime, she said sternly, she would have to trust us not to leave without paying. She repeated this four times. I thanked her four times, and pointed out that with our passports locked in her drawer, her trust was unlikely to be misplaced.
As campsites go, it was just about adequate (despite an alarming claim on the website that the place benefited from ‘running water, sewage and electricity…’). We pitched our tent, and Terry cycled up the road to where the gardienne had said, with a grimace, that there was a shop that stayed open late “because they are Arabs,” her tone leaving no doubt that she didn’t approve of other races.
When Terry returned it was with a strange and mountainous assortment, because most of the food in the shop had been meat, and as we had no cooking facilities anyway, he had bought 7lbs. of various fruits and two large bars of chocolate. We crouched in the tent sheltering from the continuing rain, peeling, munching, and spitting out pips, before I changed into my nice new satin shortie pyjamas, and we settled down for what was one of the most miserable nights of my life.
When we had put up the borrowed tent in our garden, it had seemed large enough for two, but that was without the self-inflating mattress and all our bags and bundles. With these inside, there was almost no room for ourselves and our wet waterproofs. We were squashed together in damp steaminess. In the foolish belief that the nights would be quite mild at this time of year, instead of bringing bulky sleeping bags I’d just brought along the thermal liners. We were both desperately cold. It is most unusual for Terry to be cold; at home I often have to shout at him to close the doors in the depths of winter, because he will happily leave the front door, back door and patio doors wide open all day long, in gale, hail, rain and wind.
After we’d shivered for an hour we writhed with great difficulty, in the limited space and pitch darkness, into all our cycling clothes. Then we spread over ourselves an aluminium survival blanket, and over that our wet waterproof coats. The whole lot slithered about noisily every time we moved without noticeably adding any warmth, and our faces occasionally brushed against the damp and clammy walls of the tent.
There was continual noise from aircraft, trains, cars, roaring motorbikes and barking dogs. A family with several little whimpering children arrived after midnight and spent what seemed like hours pumping up inflatable mattresses, sounding like a convention of the chronically asthmatic. I lay awake for most of the night, shaking with cold, trying not to rustle and plotting how I could force Terry to buy a decent tent and some warmer bedding, because I couldn’t survive another night like this.
CHAPTER FIVE
Cheese and Millstones
“Only peril can bring the French together. One can’t impose unity out of the blue on a country that has 265 different kinds of cheese.” General Charles de Gaulle
La Ferté-sous-Jouarre
WE awoke enveloped in a glowing yellow aura, to the sound of somebody beating a carpet. Digging our way out from beneath the damp and tangled heap of clothing, we poked our heads through the tent’s small entrance. The yellow glow was deceptive, simply an illusion created by the bright-coloured fabric of the tent; the skies were still grey, and it was drizzling. The carpet-beating noise was coming from two pigeons attempting to mate on the branch of a nearby conifer. They were attempting to mate at the extreme end of a branch far too feeble to bear their combined weight. Each time pigeon number one leapt upon pigeon number two, the branch dipped almost to the ground and sprung back up, launching them both into the air like missiles from a catapult and sending them into paroxysms of frantic wing beating. They appeared incapable of understanding why this was happening. Instead of finding a more robust branch, or even moving away from the tip, they just kept on trying and failing with much panicky wing flapping. Obviously novices with much to learn before they would hear the flutter of tiny wings.
Our options were either to squat uncomfortably in the pokey tent, eating more fruit and chocolate, or to strike camp and cycle in the drizzle to find a hot drink and breakfast. While I curled myself into as small a heap as possible, Terry dressed; then he dismantled the tent around me while I contorted myself into clean clothes. With the change from last night’s shopping we settled our camping fees to the satisfaction of the gardienne and retrieved our passports, then headed back to Meaux for breakfast.
En route, we passed a supermarket where they were most fortuitously selling large tents. Terry didn’t need any persuading after the horrible night we had spent, and our new purchase was soon strapped to the baking tray. A few hundred yards further along the road destiny had planted a sports shop, where we added a thick polar blanket to our growing pile of equipment.
With nearly 50lbs. in his panniers and 12lbs. in a backpack, Terry was already well loaded. He had fixed the baking tin to my bike rack, I should explain, to make a stable, lightweight support for the things I was carrying – the tent (two tents now), which were far wider than the handlebars, and the sleeping bags, none of which would have fitted into panniers. Plus our toiletries and a couple of books whose combined weight was now 30lbs. On my handlebars was a wire basket holding maps and various small items that we might need along the way.
Still uncertain if it was safe to leave the bikes unattended, we sat beside them outside a café in the cold damp morning; my machine attracted a crowd of people who were interested to know how it worked, how fast it went, how much it cost, how far it would go and how the battery was recharged. The few ‘proper’ cyclists, with their streamlined clothing, state of the art helmets and person-powered machines weren’t impressed, unlike the old boys and a few elderly ladies with venerable heavy, black-framed bicycles, who looked longingly at my springy, cushioned saddle, array of gears and large battery.
Gradually the drizzle fizzled out, and after our restless night we were content to just sit for a while watching the world and enjoying coffee and croissants, then wandering around for a little window-shopping, or, as the French say, window-licking. You could smell the cheese emporium at the lower end of Meaux’s pedestrian zone long before you reached it, and the whiff was both nauseating and irresistible. On the upper shelves English Cheddars rubbed rinds with Stilton, Wensleydale and Double Gloucester; beside them Italian Mozzarella, Taleggio, Pecorino, Ricotta, Gorgonzola and Grana Padano looked down upon colonies of Dutch cheeses and Spanish cheeses, Danish cheeses and German cheeses. White, yellow, red, gold, mouldy-green, blue-veined, brown, firm, creamy, pyramids, cubes, cylinders, truckles, wheels and wedges, flavoured with cumin seeds, paprika, walnuts; cheeses coated in ash, dipped in nuts, wrapped in leaves or straw, dusty, gooey, smooth, wrinkled, they sat, sweated or oozed on shelves and counters. Of the innumerable French cheeses, some were familiar but many were unknown. The place smelt like a shoe-locker might if all the runners had tossed their old trainers in there at the end of a Marathon. You could sample a different cheese here every day for a year and still not have tasted them all.
In 1814, after decades of warfare and political turmoil in Europe, the Congress of Vienna met to redraw borders and restore order to the fractured continent. During this protracted event lasting many months, to enliven and lighten the proceedings the French foreign minister, Talleyrand, proposed a competition between participating nations to find the best cheese. He was justifiably confident that his country’s nomination would trounce the English Cheddar, Italian Gorgonzola, Dutch Edam and Swiss Emmental cheese, as indeed it did. Brie was proclaimed by the members of the Congress ‘the cheese of kings and king of cheeses’.
Personally I think there are many other cheeses equally worthy of the crown, but with such an overwhelming choice, and given that we were
in Meaux, home of the very finest Brie, we bought a weeping chunk, reverently wrapped in waxed paper, and a smaller lump of the notorious Black Brie, which I have heard described as the most utterly disgusting cheese in the world. Lengthy maturation gives this horror a brown and leathery rind, a tough chewy interior, and a bitter taste; aficionados dip it into milky coffee for maximum enjoyment. We couldn’t resist buying some, out of curiosity, as we are both fairly adventurous when it comes to culinary experimentation.
The shop also sold stone pots of Meaux mustard, which the Benedictine nuns from nearby La Ferté-sous-Jouarre developed during the Middle Ages to mask the taste of tainted foodstuffs; but we had no need of unnecessary weight to carry, nor expectation of having to eat any tainted food, so we gave the mustard a miss.
A short walk up the pedestrian street leads to Meaux’s gothic cathedral, and the adjacent Bossuet gardens, mitre-shaped in keeping with their Episcopal ancestry. In pallid sunshine we picnicked on the Brie smeared onto a couple of crispy ficelles, throwing crumbs to a couple of timid kittens, and watching groups of students sprawled on the grass planning how to rule the world. Disappointingly, the Black Brie was not nearly as horrible as we had hoped. That’s not to say it was nice: it was not, but it was no worse than a very old Cheddar that might have been found stuffed down the back of a seat on a bus. We baulked at dipping it into coffee, though. After all, we wanted to experience it at its very worst; and we didn’t want to spoil a good cup of coffee.
Terry stayed outside with the bikes while I explored Meaux’s cathedral of St Etienne. The exterior showed considerable signs of distress. On the southern side, amongst gargoyled turrets, stood a row of ten saints, or apostles. They were all headless, having been decapitated during the War of Religion between Catholics and Huguenots. I wondered how angry people must have been to break off ten life-sized stone heads, because it must have required a fair amount of energy.
For a relatively small town such as Meaux, the cathedral of St Etienne seems disproportionately splendid. The vaulted ceilings are very high; the columns supporting them are very slender; the stone is very white, the light very clear. There was a pervading and not unpleasant smell of bleach. Somebody was tinkling on the organ, sending haunting, delicate notes fluttering into the air. Instead of the usual sombre paintings depicting the fourteen Stations of the Cross, simple crosses cut out of purple paper were stuck to the walls, marked with Roman numerals and titles. Number XIII bore the legend: ‘Jesus is taken down from the cross’. An irreverent wag had written beneath: ‘He’ll be back in five minutes’.
Towards the rear of the church is a vast marble statue of ‘The Eagle of Meaux’, Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, 17th century bishop, orator, statesman and writer. A notice explains that when the statue was delivered in 1911 it was originally destined to stand outside the church. Almost one hundred years later, it’s still in the same place it was put temporarily. That is no great surprise, because it must weigh at least 20 tons, and how it was ever brought inside in the first place is a minor miracle.
During WWI, Meaux had its own angel, Monsignor Marbeau, the city’s 70-year-old bishop. In September 1914 the German army was advancing rapidly towards Paris, driving back the exhausted French and British troops. With the enemy only a day away from Meaux, the town was expected to fall imminently. When news spread that the last trains were leaving, anybody with the necessary means fled, including all the local dignitaries. They left the town virtually deserted, doors and shutters closed, gas and water supplies ruptured, and bridges blown up to impede the German advance.
They also left behind some two thousand helpless women, children and wounded soldiers, all in need of food, medical attention, shelter, organisation and moral support. With no civic structure to look after them, it was the bishop, with a few helpers, who formed the “Committee of Public Interest” to care for these vulnerable people. The bishop summoned doctors, nurses, medicines and precious tobacco from Paris for the streams of wounded arriving hourly, and the committee requisitioned supplies of meat, vegetables, bread and milk to ensure that everybody was fed. They organised the cleaning of the streets, the putting to sleep of stray, starving and distressed animals, and the evacuation of the wounded.
Some of the wounded went by barge or washboat to Lagny on the eastern outskirts of Paris; others by the newly formed Field Service of the American Ambulance, one of the three volunteer American ambulance services set up at the outbreak of war. With the bodies of their Ford ambulances made from packing crates, their very first mission was to rescue the wounded from Meaux and take them to the American hospital at Neuilly, in the charge of the admirable Mrs William K Vanderbilt, who ‘wore the white Red Cross uniform. Half concealed about her neck was a double string of pearls. Rose-colored silk stockings were tipped with neat but serviceable white shoes, and in this attire she seemed to impersonate the presiding ‘good angel’ of the hospital.’ [Paris War Days by Charles Imman Barnard]
In her book Le mouvement perpétuel, histoire de l’Hôpital Américain de Paris 1906-1989, Nicole Fouché described the pitiful condition of wounded soldiers of the African Rifles. In a foreign country, whose language they did not understand, maimed and traumatised they waited helplessly to be rescued and cared for. Many of them would die in the ambulances taking them from Meaux to Paris for medical treatment.
As well as taking under his Episcopal wing Meaux’s needy citizens, Mgr Marbeau organised trucks to go daily to the front line, loaded with those items that would bring a little comfort to the troops there – pipes and tobacco, clean linen and clothing, blankets. He maintained the morale of his flock, drove around the surrounding area searching for wounded, and blessing the dead who lay in their hundreds, unburied, in what witnesses described as worse than a charnel house.
The busy bishop recognised that the situation gave him a valuable opportunity for a public relations triumph. Since the French Revolution, the Catholic Church and the State had had a difficult relationship. The politically powerful, massively wealthy clergy, living in luxury, building huge churches and furnishing them with valuable works of art, were resented by the poorer classes. All education was in the hands the clergy too. After the Revolution the State confiscated the considerable property and land belonging to the Church, and set up schools in every town and village under lay teachers. Although the church subsequently regained some of its property, it lost all of its salaries when State and Church were legally separated in 1905. This loss of power was a crushing blow to the Catholics.
Now, however, as Mgr Marbeau reminded his dependent flock, at this terrible time they were all together in the same boat. Previously many of Meaux’s citizens wouldn’t have recognised their bishop; maybe some of them had even been hostile towards him, but now they were united by the tragedy of war. It was the same all over France, with 60,000 monks and nuns returning from voluntary exile to help their country in its hour of danger. Four Jesuits had cycled back to France all the way from Belgium. It was time to put any ill-feeling behind them and work together. The bishop was rewarded for his efforts by regaining the respect and affection of Meaux’s citizenry.
But to return to the threat to Meaux and Paris. Whilst there were several thousand French troops in Paris, ready to deploy to Meaux to reinforce the French and British troops holding the enemy at bay, the overstretched railway network was unable to transport them. In an inspired and ingenious exercise, the military governor of Paris requisitioned the capital’s taxis. Quenching their thirst with wine because water was in short supply, carrying five troops to a taxi, the Parisian taxi drivers drove the forty miles between the capital and Meaux, back and forwards through the night, their headlights turned off, delivering between 4,000 and 6,000 fresh men to the front line to support the beleaguered allies and give them the strength they needed to hold the line, and forcing the Germans to retreat in what was known as the first battle of the Marne.
Paris was safe, for the time being, and so was Meaux.
Spared the devasta
tion suffered by neighbouring towns and villages, Meaux retains a number of medieval buildings, and all its provincial charm. After we had cycled around the town and ramparts, we headed down to the river Marne, which is born nearly three hundred miles to the north-east, weaving its way south-westwards towards Paris, where it attaches itself to the Seine on the eastern outskirts of the city.
This was our first sight of the river that had once been a busy thoroughfare. Now the silky, jade green water was utterly peaceful; a few fishermen stood on the banks staring at their lines, and a flotilla of moored boats were so still that they could have been paintings.
Until the advent of the washing machine in the 1950s, it was on washboats moored in the river that local laundresses carried out their trade. They paid the boat’s owner for space and the use of water heated by wood fires. On Monday they collected soiled laundry from their customers, taking it by handcart to the washboat, where they washed it on the lower deck, first scrubbing it with hot water and ash – washing powder hadn’t yet arrived – then beating it with poles, and rinsing it in the river. The clean linen was hung on the upper deck to dry, before it was ironed and returned to the customer on Wednesday. For the washerwoman it was hard work earning them a meagre living, but providing an important and valuable service for the townspeople. I wonder what happened to them once washing machines made them redundant?
Another vanished custom was the timber trains that once floated on their way to supply the insatiable appetite of Paris for building timber and firewood. Trees cut at the beginning of winter were thrown into streams in the spring, to be carried to the rivers, where they were collected and piled up to dry over the summer before setting off on their journey to the capital. Each wood merchant marked his timber at both ends with his individual stamp, so that it could be traced on arrival. For the final leg of their journey the logs were secured together into huge rafts. Steered by two men, and often carrying cargo and livestock, the rafts caused great upheaval to others who depended on the river for their livelihoods, such as fishermen and mill owners, and it was important that the timing of journeys was well-judged so that they passed as quickly as possible to minimise disruption. I thought what an exciting event this must have been for spectators, and what a shame it is that today the noisy great trucks and trailers rumbling along the roads laden with logs aren’t worth a second glance.