French Letter: entertaining the art crowd
The house is full of ladies today – and two men, one of whom is me. Louisa has invited the local art club for lunch, which means vast amounts of summer dishes, litres of white wine and rosé and a six-pack of non-alcoholic beer.
I am largely a spectator at the feast because I have to write these words. But I keep being interrupted, so you must excuse me if what follows is sometimes a little disjointed.
The art club, more properly l’Assocation des Amis, was founded some years ago by Catherine, born and raised in Paris but for many years a teacher in Verdun. Married to a Scotsman whose father was Polish, she is a stern taskmistress who keeps order in a group that inclines towards gossip. A majority of the members are English, but today we have, in addition, several French, three Americans, two Germans, a Colombian and a Russian.
Over the last two months, we have had only one day of rain, and that was a bit of a disappointment – little more than intermittent showers. Instead, the sun has been beating down, and today is no exception. The terrasse, with its bright red umbrella, has been secured by four women who, I would guess, will not give up their places lightly. Everyone else is either clustered on the patio, beneath a surprisingly large and benevolent apple tree, or sitting on the sofa and chairs in the extension built for us four years ago which since then – the kitchen aside – has become the focal point of the household.
Of the Americans, Dawnel has been here the longest. She is from Connecticut, married for many years to Yves, from Cannes, a former railway engineer who ended up teaching mathematics. Her middle name, it turns out, is Joy, because she was her parents’ first child. Di – for Delilah – is a much more recent arrival. She and her English husband lived for a long time in Arizona, which is about as different from Brittany as you can get. Today, they are thinking of relocating to Spain, for the weather, so no surprise there.
French Anne, aged 86, is the doyenne of the French contingent. Thin as a rake, she corrects our grammar and does her best to ensure that we appreciate that we live in France, not an annex of England. Anne’s handwriting is old-school copperplate. I have an example of it in front of me bearing the name of a neolithic tomb Louisa and I must visit. She would never have made it as a doctor. Then again, when she first attended school, the President was Albert Lebrun, the hapless middle-of-the-road conservative whose final duty as head of state was to hand over power to the arch-collaborator, Marshal Pétain.
None of my new Pétanque pals are here. They are all, with the exception of Sophie, men. The other man I enumerated is Glyn, from Yorkshire, who as his gift for the occasion made us a litre at least of delicious coffee ice cream – his specialité. Glyn’s wife, Gill, is, however, the pâtissière of the family. Her cakes, with a nod to Mary Berry, are the talk of the commune, or at any rate of our local pub, Les Fous. This afternoon, she has been speaking French to French Anne (so called to distinguish her from an English associate of the same name) and was pleased not only to be taken seriously in the language but steered effortlessly towards the correct usage. “Not always the case with the French,” she just confided while plying me with a dish of her husband’s ice cream.
Tonight, once we have cleared up after the art crowd, we have a dinner date with our new German neighbours and their wives, plus Reiner and Brigitte, their house guests from the old country. I lived in Germany for three years forty years ago, but to my shame Reiner’s English is better than my German, which has been reduced over time to phrases and declarative statements. Bertie, married to Mael (la Colombienne), seems to have made it his mission in life to restore my German while at the same time improving my exposure to conversational French by way of Pétanque.
Proof of the pudding in the latter context came yesterday when I had to break off from Pétanque in the park to pick up my car, a 2013 Renault Mégane, which was having its rear disk brakes replaced at a garage up the road, too far to walk for an old bloke like me with a gammy leg. They all looked at me. “Walter needs a lift,” said Sebastian. “I’ll take him,” said Philippe, our most aggressive player.
Arriving at the garage, after ten minutes of lively chat (at 59, Philippe is irked that he will have to wait until he is 64 to retire), I thanked him profusely. He didn’t understand. « C’est normal. C’est ce qu’on fait entre amis » (he used French quotation marks) – “it’s what we do for friends”.
As it happens, the car wasn’t ready. There had been “complications” and I had to sit for two hours while the mechanic, highly skilled but unusually taciturn, remained lost in the labyrinth. It all worked out in the end, though. Would the car be good now for another hundred-thousand kilometres? I asked Didier the owner of the garage, as he returned from giving the new brakes a test run. “Cent-cinquante!” he answered with a smile. “Nouvelle voiture.” He’s probably right. Cars here seem to go on forever. But if I’m not careful I’ll have a new car in the same way Trigger, from Only Fools and Horses, had a new broom after twenty years of road-sweeping – seventeen new heads and fourteen new handles.
Next stop, the Café de la Place, for a dinner conducted almost entirely in German. And they say you can’t revisit your past!
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