Long Slow Affair of the Heart, A

by Ansley, Bruce

  On the thirteenth, fireworks began at eleven p.m. We sat on the riverbank with hundreds of others. A coquettish young French girl performed for her parents, grandparents and the rest of us. She pouted and pirouetted, and everyone loved her even if we New Zealanders from a more forbidding regime felt slightly squeamish.

  A band marched by, with brass, flutes, clarinets, flutes, a saxophone, anything that could be played and carried at the same time. They played the theme tune from The Muppet Show. Fireworks lit the town and countryside culminating in a pièce de resistance set to the tune of Disney’s ‘It’s a Small World’.

  Then on to le bal, where people danced desultorily, at least until a little after midnight, when we gave up. Next day Keith from the hotel boat, said, ‘We danced until three in the morning. Everyone did. It was great. You should have been there.’ That was the story of my life.

  Next day, Bastille Day, the town band formed up ahead of the fire brigade, the mayor, war veterans and assorted dignitaries. They all marched off to ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’, and arrived on the riverbank alongside my boat whose bunting consisted entirely of underpants hung out to dry. They flapped dismally through the short ceremony. Everyone marched back to the town hall to the theme tune from the film The Longest Day, and the mayor invited everyone to a glass of wine.

  Sally and I sat inside the fine nineteenth-century church. Yellow and gold stained glass played light onto aquamarine, like the sun on sea. We soaked in the gentle silence. The bright tiled floors reflected a country life, rabbits, ducks, wheat, vines. It was quite modern, built in the late nineteenth century to replace a low, graceful twelfth-century church on the site. We were spending more time in church than French churchgoers, although there didn’t seem to be all that many of those. I sneezed. The sound echoed around the pews, chased itself around the tiled lilies and marigolds, ah-choo!

  Rogny, only fifteen kilometres away, took more than six hours to reach.

  Lots of locks. The day was very hot. No sooner would we leave one lock than another would appear, ending in a steep staircase of them which lowered us into the little village. Beside us, stepping down the green hillside, lay Les Sept Écluses, the old Napoleonic staircase of seven locks now empty but preserved, for the modern replacements were more efficient but less interesting.

  Rogny was tiny. A single brasserie struggled for business, but you could get your boat overhauled by the port’s owners who had bravely started an engineering business and seemed to be making a go of it. Some mornings a woman sat at a sewing machine in their shop, stitching up upholstery and cockpit covers.

  The hotel boat pulled in behind us. Keith the chef, who always looked as if he were recuperating from something debilitating, found quail to wrap in panacetta and serve to his guests, two ex-SAS men and their wives.

  He didn’t say where he got the quail. You could not buy anything in Rogny except the most basic food, although the town had two brocante shops. One of them was open, if you rousted the owner out of bed. He stood at his counter, sleepy and suspicious, as we inspected his antiquities, most of them junk, and all of them expensive. He didn’t mind that we bought nothing. Nothing was what he wanted to do right then.

  Why are New Zealanders so fascinated by second-hand stuff? Is it a generation thing, born of post-war frugality? Couldn’t be. Second-hand clothes are de rigueur and Japanese imports have booked their own pages in the government accounts. Buying brocante was like catching a snapper. When you hooked one, it sparkled like your very own rainbow. When you got it home, it had changed to dull grey. By the time we left, the River Queen could have set up its own stall at a vide grenier. Singapore Airlines would certainly have had something to say. We kept the stuff Sally loved most, her Murano vase, white porcelain dove, a French lace curtain embroidered with butterflies. We gave the rest away.

  Montargis was beautiful and eccentric. Its narrow canals, lit by flowers, threaded through a busy town dominated by its crumbling château. The town was full of boats. The Johanna Grietje tied to a pile of steel just outside the port. We pulled into what seemed to be a vacant space, helped by the captain of a hotel boat moored ahead of us. Behind, a tired-looking golden spaniel submitted to a trim and perm on the dining room table of a luxurious canal boat.

  We’d scarcely tied the last knot when a large Dutch cruiser, with a name that sounded like someone being strangled, arrived honking. That space was theirs, cried the skipper. No it wasn’t, I called back. It was demonstrably ours, for here we were.

  I went inside. The Dutch boat stayed where it was. The harbourmaster arrived. We’d have to move he said. The Dutch boat had booked our space. I wouldn’t shift until he found us another mooring, I said. He did. I untied, took down the sun umbrella, put away the deck furniture, started up, and moved away from the bank.

  The Dutch skipper shook his fist. I flipped him the bird.

  His jaw dropped. The impertinence. He abandoned his big spoked wheel and ran to the after-deck, shouldering his passengers out of the way.

  He roared at me across the water. I told him to fuck off. He told me I was not an Englishman. I told the New Zealand government to do something about that bloody silly Union Jack and stars. Sally told me to calm down. The Dutchman told Sally she was absolutely right. She told him to fuck off.

  An old woman in a wheelchair saw our flag and confirmed the Dutchman’s accusation. I was not an Englishman.

  ‘Eh,’ she said, ‘you are from New Zealand. That is a long way away. I come from Paris. That is a long way away too. I was a chanteuse, a singer. Now I am an old woman in a wheelchair.’ But much better off than Captain ’addock, we thought.

  Captain ’addock lived alone on his barge and was apparently barking. He claimed to have trained horses in Hong Kong and so was an expert on farming. He hated EU farming subsidies. It made lazy buggers of them all. He hated the Dutch. He said one of them had rammed him in the course of running hash to Marseilles, and had bent his rudder. He did not say what his barge had been doing to get in the way of a Dutch drug-runner. He gave me a courgette. He said he was going to sell his boat and grow courgettes instead. He gave me a letter for l’éclusier, saying he would be arriving at his lock tomorrow. When I gave it to the lockie, he said ‘Ah, Monsieur ’addock, he speak. He speak speak speak.’

  My brother Craig and his wife Erica joined us in Montargis for a few days on the canals. I met them at the station, called a taxi and told the driver where the boat was moored.

  Ah oui, he said.

  I’ll race you on my bike, I said.

  Ah oui, oui, he said, and tore off.

  I crashed a red light and passed him. He overtook on the straight. I shot through a pedestrian precinct. He complained to his passengers. Your brother breaks the rules, he said. I was waiting when they arrived. I win, I said. It wasn’t fair, he said, and went off in a huff. The golden spaniel saw its owner approaching with scissors and curlers and wearily climbed back onto the table without waiting for the command.

  Temperatures rose into the forties. In Souppe we swam at la plage, a beach painstakingly reconstructed on the shores of an artificial lake, with lifeguards, swimming pools, fenced swimming zones — a precaution against tide rips and sharks? — pedalos, bouncy castle, a library without books. We watched the young studs running up to a rock and bombing into the water. They posted a woman at the edge to signal them when there was no danger of hitting anyone. They took social responsibility seriously here. The sand was fine as talcum powder. It turned us all white as we lay there in the hot, hot afternoon.

  On we went to the beautiful walled town of Moret-sur-Loing. The hotel barge pulled in behind us. Jo immersed herself in the latest Harry Potter, just released. Robin, its owner and builder, came to talk. He was Oxford-educated and his long hair and skinny frame gave him a wild look.

  Robin did not run a tight ship. ‘It’s a loose one,’ said Keith.

  He seemed never to know, quite, where he’d be going that day. The boat bore the scars of many e
ncounters. The crew complained of leaks which kept the water pump running and them awake, of winds blowing through the floorboards. Robin said he was in it for the lifestyle. His guests seemed to like the lifestyle too. They sat under the awning and talked, and laughed, and told us they wouldn’t have it any other way.

  Herman passed us one last time, going like the clappers towards some destination of the mind. He was everywhere. ‘I beat you to Paris,’ he yelled as he went by. His wife smiled timidly. For a while I couldn’t see his brother, then a little cruiser sneaked into view, like a shadow, and slipped past silently in his wake.

  My brother Euan and his wife Gabrielle arrived; now there were six Ansleys in one boat. Once the mixture would have been explosive; now, we were delighted to spend time with each other.

  New Zealanders collected in that odd way they do, not haphazardly but not much planned either. They persuaded a café to turn on the sports channel, and watched the All Blacks beat the Wallabies. The café owner kept the sound off. His clientele were supremely indifferent to this critical moment in the affairs of two South Pacific nations. Only an outbreak of cheering, or booing, stopped them talking; then they’d peer curiously at the screen, shrug and go back to their conversation.

  We all agreed the All Blacks were looking good for the World Cup. Good? What a euphemism! The All Blacks were going to cream them all. I gave the little flagstaff carrying the silver fern an extra coat of varnish for good measure.

  We were very close to the Seine by now and we had a last, long picnic on the riverbank. We ate rare roast beef and duck terrine and spicy sausage in pastry, salads of tiny tomatoes and feta, little chocolate cakes with gold flakes on top, apricot and plum tarts, Brie, Roquefort, curd cheese and crusty bread, huge nectarines and big green cardboard boxes of strawberries. We drank quite a lot of wine. Bon appétit, called the French passersby.

  My family left in the morning, a little heavily, and the boat seemed empty as we ran the short length of the Loing and turned into the Seine. The civilised river seemed big as a lake after the tight canals. Cultivated banks allowed glimpses of summer homes, some little more than sheds, some suburban, some follies complete with turrets, towers and parapets.

  It was two days to Paris and the first was long, wet and cold. We travelled with a cavalcade of huge barges, squeezing into locks with one cumbersome creature of four vessels locked together and pushed by a tug steered casually by Madame, who blew smoke and smiled at us while her husband huddled in the rain and pointed to the heavens in disgust. We felt like Scruffy the Tugboat arriving in the big bad world.

  A boat was moored outside one lock. It looked familiar. As we drew closer, we recognised it: Paul and Carla’s cruiser. We honked the horn. Paul appeared on deck, sleepy from his after-lunch siesta. Then Carla, then Chica, their dog, the reason they were in this lonely spot in the first place: Chica liked the lifestyle, they said. They planned to sell their boat, but not until the dog died. They threw off their lines: ‘We’ll come with you.’

  Luckily for us, they did. At the next lock l’éclusier closed the gates as we approached, to let through a barge coming the other way. He could equally have let us all in and done the same thing, but oh well.

  The barge emerged on our side. The lights turned green. We entered the chute, the approach to the lock.

  The lights went red, and stayed that way. We went round, and round.

  Carla saved us. She called the lockie on the VHF. He was waiting for a barge to come through from our side; he wanted it in the lock first. The barge proved to be the cavalcade steered by Madame. But, we said, she’d wanted us to go first into the lock in the previous locks. Carla and the lockie consulted. The lights turned green. We’d been circling in the rain for more than an hour. We were wet and cold. But, oh well.

  Late that afternoon we tied up outside another lock for the night, alongside two Australians, Kev and Yvonne.

  Paul told us of being thrown out of his Arnhem home in the last war by Germans who cleared the town. They had been given only a few hours to leave and his parents carried what they could on their bicycles, and on his pram. It was not very much.

  After the war they returned. They were lucky. Their house was intact but empty. The Germans had taken what they wanted, then the British, but, said Paul, it was probably the Dutch who stripped it completely. A friend of the family had found her curtains hanging in a neighbour’s house. Paul was only two when they became homeless, but he still had nightmares filled with harsh voices and the noise of aeroplane engines.

  We were engrossed in his story. That night I dreamed of planes, and invaders, and nearly went into cardiac arrest when we were shaken out of bed before five next morning by the noise of battle which resolved into a blast of hip-hop.

  I peered through the curtains. A black Mercedes stood on the path outside, a few metres from the boat, its doors open. Three youths and a girl were dancing in the rain, with a looseness and lack of rhythm that suggested they’d had substances other than croissants that morning.

  Dutch youths always looked as if they were searching for old ladies to help across the street. French youths looked as if they would biff you on the head for half a Euro, or for nothing on public holidays, yet we found them friendly, even when they were convinced we were not from this planet. In neither country had we felt any aggression, nor felt unsafe for even a moment.

  As it grew lighter, the Mercedes showed signs of a rough night, and so did the youths. They vanished when we appeared, abandoning the car, probably stolen, and leaving one pale survivor who thought it might be a good time to try his English.

  ‘Take me with you,’ he pleaded. ‘Please.’

  Paul was furious, Glenn and Trish friendly as always. Our last impression of rural France was his thin frame, dressed in black and bent like a question mark as he argued his case over the water: ‘Pleeeeese?’

  The Seine gave up its airs and graces and turned ugly. Summer houses gave way to industrial theatre. Silos, crushers, foundries, warehouses, dust and barges lined its banks. Roars, hisses, bleeps, blasts — all the noise, in short, of people making a living — drowned even the diesel’s purr. The bridges changed from grim to utilitarian to old to elegant.

  In the last lock Kev gave us some advice on Paris. We had to go to the Moulin Rouge, he said, although not before nine p.m., otherwise we’d have to pay for dinner. The stage was empty when he and Yvonne last went, he said, so the two hopped onto it for a spot of the light fantastic. It was great, said Kev, and it gave Yvonne a chance to try out her new knee.

  At Chinatown, where a hotel, restaurants, pagodas, dragons, lots of green tiles and red paint hung over the Seine, the other two boats branched off into the Marne. The river would take Kev and Yvonne back down the middle of France, and Paul and Carla back to Holland.

  We last saw them standing on their after-deck, Carla waving Chica’s paw goodbye. For much of the year we’d shared each other’s lives; we knew as much about them as of some of our close friends at home. Probably we’d never see them again. It was one of many small endings. They were taking part of our adventure with them. We waved goodbye, we hoped not at Chica.

  Now we were amid another city of lost dreams. Barges were being converted into tourist boats. Some of their builders had knocked off for a while, say, two or three years. Many barges had been turned into tourist boats in schemes that had foundered as surely as the rusty hulks surrounding them. It wasn’t hard to see why. A Mississippi river boat and a floating bamboo café must have caused endless ethnic confusion, compounded by the Chinese junk, or the boat that might have started as a junk but ended up looking something like Cook’s Endeavour shrunk to the size of an Auckland launch. One looked like those shoeboxes we made as kids, with dioramas inside and a hole to peep through at one end. Another seemed to be a half-sunken Oxford caravan, and possibly was.

  We passed a high-tech floating swimming pool, closed despite the heat. A new city was springing up on the left bank: new roads, flyovers, supermark
ets, malls, apartments, warehouses.

  And suddenly we were in front of a cranky old lock which let us into the Arsenal in the Place de la Bastille.

  We tied up beneath the Colonne de Juillet, the July column celebrating the revolution and mourning the dead. From our mooring we could see the golden girl atop her pedestal, the Génie de la Liberté, the spirit of freedom.

  Paris!

  Chapter Twelve

  The Tour de France ended the day after we arrived. I’d done my time at such places as Eden Park and Carisbrook, but enthusiasm for the bike race made the home crowds look like the Kirwee Bowling Club veterans’ tournament. Paris had some two million residents, and in late July tourists had doubled the population, and all of them seemed to be intent on watching the grand finale.

  That year’s Tour de France was supposed to have been spoiled by drug scandals. Spoiled like Kate Moss. Everyone wanted a look. The finish line was invisible beneath the press of bodies.

  I chose a spot near the Champs-Elysées. Cavalcades of team buses went by, looking as if they accommodated rock stars, which of course they did. Fleets of official cars rolled past. A posse of motorcycle police in green helmets got a cheer. An hour passed, then another. At last, the crowd roared. I spotted flashes of colour, moving at incredible speed. That, for me, was the end of the Tour de France.

  Later we watched on TV the winners being crowned and the losers smiling lemony smiles and everyone going home vowing they’d be back next year. I wished I could say the same.

  For we had found the ideal way of living in Paris. The Arsenal, where we were moored, was once a real arsenal serving the Bastille demolished after the Revolution. Now it was a perfectly safe harbour, a lock at one end from the Seine and a tunnel at the other leading to the tree-lined Canal St Martin, crossed by lacy bridges. It had good showers, washing machines, dryers. Best of all, it was right in the middle of the city, beside the Place de la Bastille, an easy walk down the Rue de Rivoli to the Louvre or across the river to the Ile de la Cité and Notre Dame, although we didn’t want to go to either; it was peak tourist season and queues stretched for blocks.