Someone's Wife

  Robert’s in his coat, with just a glimpse of his sleeveless fairisle jumper, his velvet trousers and his keep on trucking shoes, while, seven months pregnant, I’m in my long black skirt, the zip held together with a piece of elastic. I’m in a patchwork top made out of dozens of pieces cut from old frocks that I bought from the market in Portobello Road the year before. It’s actually lovely. But knowing it’s cold in France, I’m also wearing a fur jacket, same Portobello Road market. Dozens of different-coloured rabbits have died for it to be made, and it repays them by surreptitiously shedding. My black skirt looks like I’ve spent the trip cuddling a moulting Persian cat. I am a vision in various patchworks. Eyes darting from side to side, Marcel Astic ushers us quickly to his car, grateful that the plane is so late that the press photographers he’s arranged to be there to meet us have given up and gone to another job.

  In his Peugeot 504, driving faster than I have ever been driven, Marcel takes us to his restaurant, the Chez Rose, where Madame Astic awaits us. She is fiercely, traditionally, French groomed. She’s even less able than he is to hide her What. Have. We. Here? expression. I speak to her in my horrendously accented French and she relaxes. Negligibly. Robert just smiles at her. Later she is to say—I think—that with those blue eyes, Robert could’ve had her at any time.

  The other New Zealand rugby wives she knows are recently arrived Lyn de Cleene, trim in her neat A-line knee-length skirt, and Chis Laidlaw’s wife Helen Kedgley, in Lyon with Chris the previous season. Helen too is inclined towards the hippy, but she’s also beautiful in a French way, with those fine eyes with sculpted eyelids that film stars have. My relatively ordinary eyes are surrounded by the regrettable John Lennon glasses; I haven’t been able to wear my contacts on the plane.

  Madame christens us ‘les bohèmes’ and sets out to make the best of a bad job. She and Marcel organise someone from the club to take Robert to buy a genuine sheepskin coat—no, lambskin, it’s as soft as cashmere—thigh-length, and a delicate light brown with darker wool inside. With conservative Presbyterian bank manager’s daughter genes still hovering close by, I actually prefer it to his denim one; he looks more like a film star than a rocker now. Being so pregnant, I’m clearly seen as a lost cause.

  I go to the rugby. Behind me sit a few players not on the field that day. One goes immediately into French auto-flirt. ‘My name,’ he says in English, leaning right in to what is now known as my personal space, ‘is ’Appy tits.’ He’s Jean-Luc Guénichon. Gay then means ’appy. What nichon means is clear from context. Apart from flirting numéro 8s, the rest of the crowd’s not that different from a New Zealand one, except the cigarettes are Gauloise and if anyone pretends to be hurt, which the French players do with impressive flair, they get Cinéma! not Hollywood! Robert has the great good sense to be an immediate hit. He scores a try or two, not to mention the odd flamboyant field goal. Flamboyant goes down well in France. Bur-jes! Bur-jes! roars the crowd. If a New Zealand crowd were even remotely likely to chant a player’s name, it would be Burjuss! which doesn’t sound nearly as good. We also like how they say his name: Rob-airrr … Now it is considered courteous to pronounce anyone’s name as it’s pronounced in their own language, but we are so pleased to hear it sounding so much more glamorous than Robbut.

  It’s the first away game. Chalon sur Saône. Light sleet is falling. Robert is yet to learn that you never win an away game. The referee has already been bought an excellent lunch, several courses, along with the best Beaujolais, by the local club: it’s a done deal.

  Possibly because of Robert’s assistance, the LOU does the unthinkable: it wins an away game. The crowd surges onto the field. They are not after Robert’s autograph. Joel, centre, tugging off his boots, mimes that Robert should do the same. Robert doesn’t, instead following closely in Joel’s wake as Joel, his boots spiky side out, pushes through the loyal locals.

  Robert’s making friends: he’s their very own All Black. He’s learning French quite quickly. Whereas I know the French equivalent of It is a beauteous evening, calm and free, Robert knows Why didn’t the fucking arsehole throw the ball in fucking straight? When I pick up a word from him—vachement, which is literally cow-ly, which seems a mild version of bloody—Madame Astic scolds me for my use of it, saying nice young ladies do not use this word. Language is not straightforward. Ostensibly genteel women called their babies petit cong. In English cunt is one of the most offensive swear words; in France it’s a compliment when applied to a baby, but an insult if used to another rugby player.

  While Robert’s learning the intricacies of the language, and of winning away, I’m learning the reality of being described as one thing only: a wife. A rugby wife. Soon I will be a mother, but in Lyon that will define me even less than my wifehood.

  I’m also pushed into analysing what friendship means for the first time. I’ve changed schools as a child, but new friends have always turned up. Sometimes the moment of meeting imprints on the memory. I’m in Standard 5. The new headmaster arrives to open the District High School in Pātea; teenagers will no longer be bussed to Hāwera for their secondary schooling. I’ve been in Pātea for just a few months. We’re milling outside on the first day of the first term, and Susan Smith, the headmaster’s daughter, is the new girl. We are readers, writers of stories, amateur artists. We are prepared to role play being French spies. She has had her photo in the paper with Opo the friendly dolphin. She talks about up north. Satisfyingly, we are immediately best friends.

  In Lyon, I’m not linked to an educational institution, which I have been since I was three. Institutions are busy places and they provide easy friendship. Now, I’m going to have to make an effort to find my own.

  Joel’s wife likes reading, and my heart tentatively expands.

  She pulls a book from her nappy bag and my heart stretches out another hopeful centimetre, only to deflate immediately. Just by looking at the cover of her book, and seeing the raised gold lettering, the look of lust in the eyes of the hero, the downcast lids of the heroine, I know she’s not reading France’s very own Fay Weldon.

  There’s Mireille, who teaches English, and who’s married to Jean-Claude who’s a proud communist. Both good things. I like her, but she has already been bagsed by Lyn de Cleene, whose need is greater than mine, as she has no French whatsoever. When people present as best friends, it’s not easy to push in. I like Christiane, who teaches French at a high school, the equivalent job to the one I’ve just left. Eventually we become lifelong friends. She’s a strong, beautiful woman who met her husband, the team’s captain Jean-Louis, when they both played rugby for the LOU. They both have some English. But only people who are as short as I am will understand how difficult it can be to befriend someone who is nearly a foot taller, how like an awkward child you feel trotting along beside them, skipping to keep up.

  And I’m used to being articulate. I have talked too much all my life. Our family doctor, when I’m three, tells my mother my talking in my sleep means I have an over-active imagination. My teacher in the primers, Mrs Langman, has written on my school report, Linda is a joy to teach, but oh how she talks. My Standard 6 teacher introduces me to alliteration when he calls me Long-tongued Linda. Five years later, my quotation in the school magazine reads, Generally speaking, she’s generally speaking. Now, I can tell how hard the people I meet are finding it to talk to me. They’re kind: they do their bit, grow perceptibly exhausted, excuse themselves to go to the lavatory, then reappear and sit next to someone else. I don’t blame them, I’ve done exactly that myself when confronted with someone foreign. I sit there trying to look as if I don’t care. It’s school dances all over again. It’s Standard 1, when I wasn’t invited to a girl’s birthday party and everyone who was invited couldn’t stop talking about the kittens in the barn.

  And then there’s the question of what we’re actually going to live on. Without really discussing it, we decide if we ignore it, it will go away.

  It’s an odd situation. We have money, mostl
y because the club has paid us back for our tickets to France, and we’ve brought a couple of thousand with us. They’re paying us in kind—there’s free accommodation; any bill that arrives in the mail is passed on to Maurice, the club’s treasurer; there’s a car provided, and free petrol as long as we buy it from the Peugeot dealer in Lyon; and boxes of provisions from Astic’s restaurant. These have a wonderful randomness. There’s fruit and vegetables, meat, a variety of cheeses, and several thin blocks of dark Swiss chocolate. Everything in Lyon is wrapped in vast amounts of tinfoil; Marcel is a strong supporter of the aluminium industry. One week, there’s a thick wedge of what seems like a solid, grainy jam. It is divine. I ask for more the next time we’re in the restaurant and realise this is an overstepped mark: we have been privileged to be the recipients of Madame’s homemade quince paste and it certainly isn’t appropriate to ask for more. We can also eat at their restaurant, in the room off the kitchen where the family and staff eat, whenever we want to. I still long for the two things I ask for most often—his quenelles, best in the world, perfect sausage-shaped fish soufflés which lie under a sauce flavoured with shrimps, and his veal chop with little pan-roasted potatoes. I avert my mind from the killing of calves who have never seen the light of day.

  Like many New Zealanders, we have had it firmly imprinted in us that we must not sponge. It takes months for us to truly see that the Astics see providing us with meals as perfectly normal. After all, for years they’ve been feeding Vincent Graule—who played for France in the 1930s, drop-kicked a crucial goal in some important match, became known forever after as M’sieur le Drop, and has never worked a day since. One night we go to another restaurant in Lyon that has some vague link to the club. Monsieur Lambert is a supporter. Robert is recognised. A fuss is made of us, we’re ushered to the best table, a bottle of champagne is uncorked, a marvellous meal is spread in front of us, and our attempt to pay is refused. Years later, we realise they really wanted us to go back. We never do, because we’re afraid they might think we’re after another free meal.

  Magically, Susan appears. Susan is from Texas, and she’s married to a Frenchman. Toby is about to be born, and she too is pregnant. I think it is Marcel Astic who makes the connection. I sense that we are politically quite different—as it turns out, I’m right. Her family are long-time friends of the Bushes. She looks just like my American penfriend from the sixties, with her groomed, flicked-up-at-the-ends hair. She speaks in an enchanting soft drawl. She says y’all. Her brother, she says, was in an America’s Cup team and has just been to New Zealand. ‘He’s famous in New Zealand!!’ I say when I learn his name. He’s the one who has said to his team, Hold your noses, boys. We’re in deep shit. She’s married to Christian, a lawyer who is in commercial property development with his father. Through Susan I meet Monique, about 25 years older than us, who speaks excellent English. Her husband Yves is the first Frenchman I know who kisses my hand in exactly the way it is done in the movies. He may have simultaneously clicked his heels, or is it German commandants who do that? He looks like Giscard d’Estaing.

  Monique is a dream friend for someone like me who has spent her youth playing complicated games escaping the Nazis. Brought up near the Pyrénées, Monique actually has spent the war years escaping from les Boches. She’s a riveting teller of unforgettable stories involving her riding a bike with rags for tyres for hours to get a dozen eggs to her family. The few that don’t break are confiscated by German soldiers. Sitting school exams aged round 15, she emerges to find the school’s courtyard lined with armed German soldiers who order every boy into trucks to be taken to Germany as forced labour. Fortunately, the war ends before they get there, and they are returned. Her gift is to make the events seem exciting, not terrifying. Wartime France, she says, was excellent for girls like her who were inclined to put on weight. Never so slim!

  She makes war seem like an enchanting story. She learns her father is in the Resistance when her boyfriend tells her he’s just learnt that he’s to be sent to Germany, and can her father help him get across the mountains to Spain? Her father does. She spends the next two years not knowing what has become of Yves. Meanwhile, he’s been captured by the Spanish who put him in a squalid jail. He escapes from there, half-starved, and manages to make contact with people who smuggle him to England where he joins de Gaulle’s Free French Army. From there he gets to America, from where he writes to tell Monique he is still alive, and that he has every intention of marrying her. He loves America and spends his life working for an American company in France. For this reason, both he and Monique speak perfect English.

  She has a daughter our age, Dominique, to whom she is determined to introduce us. We meet them for dinner at Monique and Yves’, with Susan and Christian. Dominique lives in Paris with her boyfriend Lionel, and works in television. She has recently graduated from the Sorbonne; Lionel is handsome in a brainy, tortoiseshell glasses and cream trench-coat sort of way. We have not long lost Toby, and we are drawn to people without children. I quietly covet her life. Dominique glances appreciatively at our clothes, then across to Susan’s husband Christian in his dark suit. Later she tells her mother that Christian is the worst kind of Frenchman, a capitalist. On the other hand, we, with our objection to sporting contacts with South Africa, our overt liberalism, are gentils. She invites us to stay with them in Paris.

  It’s only six years since the French students have pulled up the cobblestones to repel the police and Lionel has been heavily involved in the student revolt. In Lionel’s 2CV we do a drive around the Left Bank. We are still seven years away from facing the Red Squad ourselves, so it comes as a surprise when a gendarme wanders into the path of our car and lazily indicates we should stop. Lionel winds down the window and passes the gendarme his ID.

  As we sit in the car, watching traffic going past in both directions, we listen to the gendarme telling Lionel that this is a one-way street and that he’s going down it the wrong way. Lionel thanks him courteously, turns the car around and drives in the opposite direction. I cannot believe what’s just happened, I rage from the back seat. Lionel is philosophical. They know his registration number. They didn’t like him in 1968, and they’re not going to change their minds any time soon. If he’d been the slightest bit tetchy, they’d have taken him in.

  France likes rules. We have various coloured cards and can make no sense of them whatsoever. We have already slid into a type of lethargy: if we get into trouble, Marcel Astic or Maurice Biron will fix it. We are so well looked after that it ruins the rest of our lives; we remain forever indolent teenagers who never quite know which part of the form we have to fill in.

  Particularly interesting is our situation with cars. On our arrival we are given a bright-yellow VW Beetle—Le Jeans—with denim seats that match Robert’s ill-chosen coat to perfection. In the driver’s seat he looks like he’s just head and hands. We are photographed by Le Midi being passed the keys. This does not last: I suspect we simply are not glamorous enough to be their poster people. After that, there’s a deal with Peugeot.

  Over the next two years we are to have a total of 13 cars. They are generally two-year-old Peugeot 204s, though one giddying time we get a pale-blue 304, the next model up. They are cars traded in by people buying new ones; we keep them just long enough for them to not lose any value. We learn something very useful: same car, same age, but driving them a different experience.

  They don’t always come fully equipped. With our New Zealand friends Di and Alistair, and my friends Tina and Sue, we drive one of the Peugeots into the country for the definitive French picnic: the glutton in me has never forgotten the prune tarts we buy on our way. We get a puncture on a quiet country road. We hunt for a non-existent jack. We have no choice but to lift the car off the ground while Robert pulls off the flat tyre and forces the spare into place. We are so grateful to have Di, a trained PE teacher, whose slim figure belies her Trojan strength. I can still remember how it feels to have metal cutting into the palms of my hand. />
  The summer after Toby dies, we travel, travel, travel. This means that we have to buy our own petrol, and we have to pay for accommodation. Europe has good cheap hotels then. But we’re eating through our money.

  My parents are coming, planned when they had a new grandchild to visit. We cross the Channel to meet them in London. For the only time in my life, I see my father cry.

  Where is our grey card? they ask us in Calais. We don’t even know what a grey card is.

  It is, apparently, proof of who owns the car. ‘Do you own the car?’ they ask us.

  ‘No,’ says Robert, ‘Peugeot owns the car.’

  The official’s face shows what he’s thinking: Crétin. He leans in our window; just a hint of aggression.

  ‘Je suis Rugbyman,’ says Robert, an inspired choice of word.

  ‘Who do you play for?’

  ‘The LOU.’

  ‘Where do you come from?’

  ‘Nouvelle Zélande.’

  ‘Who did you play for there?’

  About to say, Massey University, Robert realises this is no time to answer literally.

  ‘Les All Blacks.’

  Ahhh—all is explained. Who cares about the lack of documentation! The official is a rugby man himself ! Un ami de Spanghero—Walter! Au ’voir! ’Ave a good holiday in Grand Bretagne! And make sure you come back!

  After being in and out of the apartment in rue Vauban all summer, with friends from New Zealand staying so often that Madame Astic calls our apartment ‘hotel Vauban’, we return permanently to Lyon for the next rugby season. I’m a few months pregnant with Benedict. We have to acknowledge we are nearly out of funds: even done economically, travel doesn’t come cheap. Robert makes one of his visits to Maurice, and comes home with a wad of notes to see us through. Through to what? Is he now officially professional? Quite apart from needing money to live, Robert feels a rapidly disappearing moral responsibility to get a job. He’s here on a student visa, so isn’t sure what this entails. He’s off to see Marcel Astic to discuss the situation with him. Marcel is clearly surprised that anyone would want a job if there’s someone like Maurice prepared to hand over a wad of notes, no questions asked. Marcel is also slightly worried about what sort of job someone with an MSc (Hons) in botany is actually suited for.