Almost French (21 page)

‘
Danger: Engins de Guerre
’, warned a welcoming sign. World War II relics littered the landscape. Because of the coastline’s proximity to England, the Germans were convinced the Allies would try to land here and they built scores of blockhouses for defence. At Dannes several of the monolithic concrete structures loom over the sand, having been left intact to preserve this period of history, and also because it would simply cost too much to dismantle them. Rusted barbed wire reaches through the dunes; thick concrete pins poke through the sand having being laid to prevent enemy boats from landing. Gazing fondly around him, Frédéric had reminisced about playing war games here as a boy, how he and his mates would vie for the roles of Resistance heroes.

Suddenly, incredibly, the unmistakable sound of gun shots had then shattered the peace. All these remnants of war had made me twitchy and my instinct was to dive behind a dune. Three portly men in baggy trousers and gum boots ambled by, casually waving rifles. Their faces were half-hidden by chequered berets and bushy moustaches and I’d wanted to laugh—they looked like French farmers straight out of central casting. More shots rang out, aimed into the air. It’s hunting season, Frédéric had explained, nonchalantly. They’re shooting ducks.

I couldn’t hold my tongue any longer. ‘You call this a
beach
?’ I blurted.

I’d pitied him this place, this pallid substitute for surf and sand where any moment you might be whacked on the head by a dead duck. How poorly it compared with the golden coastline which fringes my own homeland, the dark blue Pacific, starry in the sunlight. I’d felt superior in the knowledge that no-one would really think Dannes was beautiful if they knew what beaches were supposed to look like. I was dumbfounded when Frédéric told me that several years ago during a storm, this exact landscape—this monochromatic gloom—had inspired him to write a poem. Fighting my prejudices, I’d squinted and concentrated, trying to summon up the scene as he saw it. Failing.

You’d think a compromise could be easily reached. But the conflict over Baincthun is emotionally charged. At heart, it isn’t about scenery: it is about who we are, individually, and what we are willing to become. It highlights ingrained cultural differences. Unfamiliar with the tradition of retreating to family homes on weekends, I resent the routine of it, the expectation, whereas for Frédéric, returning regularly to his
pays
is the most natural thing in the world. He thinks we’re lucky having access to a country home just a few hours from Paris. Besides, the Boulonnais is beautiful! I must be crazy not to see it!

Raising the subject only polarises us even more. The script is always pretty much the same:

Me: ‘Why don’t you go alone if you want to go this weekend.’

Frédéric (unhappily): ‘But you never want to go.’

Me (indignant): ‘We were there a couple of weeks ago!’

Frédéric: ‘
Four
weekends ago.’

Me: ‘
Three
. Anyway, I’d just rather stay in Paris.’

Frédéric: ‘But weekends are for leaving Paris!’

Me (insistent): ‘What’s wrong with you going alone?’

Frédéric (tired voice): ‘You know how it is in France. Going back to family homes is something French couples do together.’

Me (exploding with impatience): ‘Yes, well, I’m not French!’

Frédéric (theatrical sigh): ‘When are you going to give up trying to start a revolution? Can’t you just accept some things the way they are?’

This is my cue to remind him of the litany of things I’ve already accepted in order to be with him. Changing the country where I live, my language, my job …

Invariably, the discussion ends in mutual pissed-off silence.

Something has to give and eventually it does.

I’m not sure exactly when compromise is reached. It is difficult to identify the beginning of gradual change, to isolate the reasons for it occurring. But sometime during my second year in France we both start to face facts. No matter how much I might dream of Avignon or Arles, the reality is I share my life with a man from northern France.
Baincthun is part of the package.
I may as well accept it. Frédéric grows more realistic too. He realises that I’m not going to go up there
every
month and stops applying pressure.

On a deeper level, I think compromise became possible because of an important realisation:
each of us is doing their best
. I say this with hindsight, because it’s only once it has ended that the conflict acquires clarity. Frédéric begins to understand that I am struggling on many fronts. With the French language and people and myriad cultural differences
that ensure life is never boring but which occasionally leave me feeling defeated. In the struggle to find my place in France I’ve discovered a million details that matter to me—details which define me as non-French. Much as I’d initially wanted to fully integrate, I knew now I never would, not completely, I couldn’t,
I didn’t want to
. This wasn’t a choice, it simply wasn’t possible.
I will never be French
. Frédéric, I think, understood this now.

It dawned on me in time that Frédéric couldn’t dump his upbringing, his past, all those rich cultural references either. In a country which is suspicious of change, where traditions are clung to and life beats to a rhythm of unquestioned routines, something like spending a lot less time in his adored
pa
y
s
represents a private revolution. Perhaps the New World, with its roots in mobility, can never totally understand the Old in this way. In any event, what had appeared to me an insignificant concession was, in fact, something that cut to his core.

Once I begin to understand that, a gradual evolution takes place. First, I stop hating the region. Then, I actually discover things in its favour. Some beauty is bedazzling—its self-evidence steals your breath and practically knocks you off your feet. It is
fact
. Paris springs to mind. Prague. The natural wonder that is the south island of New Zealand. And in my perhaps biased opinion, Sydney. But appreciation of beauty can also creep up on you. It can be a taste acquired through experience, time, love and deepening knowledge. It can spring not from the grandeur of the big picture but affection for the small things and parts which give a place its heart.

The Saturday morning food market at Boulogne-sur-Mer is one such experience I grow to cherish. Now, on our once-
every-couple-of-months visits to the north, we always go there. It is an example of how markets should be, how they used to be: a collection of stalls selling whatever people could pull that morning from their gardens. The characters are salty and rough. Women with thick legs and old-fashioned floral aprons stand behind tables displaying a few handfuls of beans, four dirty eggs and one or two punnets of potatoes and strawberries—or some other miscellany. The hands that serve you are ingrained with soil. Conversation is carried out in a patois that in its purest form is incomprehensible to outsiders. Spread around the base of a lovely old church, the market is next to a row of cafés which by the end of the morning has filled with shoppers. The people of northern France are big beer drinkers and before leaving we join the crowds enjoying a pre-lunch ale.

Then there are evenings at Wimereux, a seaside town where we go for
moules marinières
at one of the cafés along the dyke. The dish comes in a deep casserole and I love everything about it: the generous serving, the delicate mussels which aren’t too meaty, the hands-on method of eating using a shell as a pincer and fingers to dip the crunchy
frites
into the winey sauce.

When we can, we go to see Jean-Michel who lives in a nearby village. I have always appreciated his warmth but lately his hospitality has reached new heights. As well as dogs and cats his house is now home to a pet chicken, a rabbit and several families of rats. None of the animals are kept in cages. ‘They’ll sort it out,’ he growls, whenever an altercation occurs, usually between a rat and a cat. Dinners turn into surreal comedy sketches as Poulet (the pet chicken) pecks around our plates and a rat scurries across the table. Compared with the formality of many Paris dinner parties, these
mad evenings are a gust of fresh air, sweeping away the cobwebs of social convention.

Even the ‘gloomy’ beach is not entirely without redeeming features now. Although in my mind it still doesn’t compare to beaches in Australia, there is something invigorating about the scudding clouds, the sunbursts that spotlight a dune, the effect so sudden and fleeting you wonder if you’ve imagined it. At other times, the retreating tide leaves tiny lakes in the dimpled sand, making the beach gleam with millions of mirrors. On a sunny day, the milky Channel waters sparkle with glints of blue, green and yellow, and yes, I agree, the colours are opalescent.

Given my confidence about the superiority of Australia’s sand and surf, it comes as a rude shock to discover our visions of my homeland may diverge dramatically at times too. At the end of my second year in France, Frédéric comes to Australia with me for a holiday. This is the first time he’ll see my country and I am terribly excited about taking him there. But almost from the moment we land the trip teaches me a lesson in perceptions and how much they are linked to our connection to a place.

My brother and sister pick us up from the airport and we head straight to my parents’ home on Sydney’s northern beaches. It’s about eight in the morning and, although there are some clouds about, even at this hour the light makes us squint. As we curve around the Cahill Expressway I can’t contain my exhilaration: ‘Look, the Harbour Bridge!’.

But to my surprise Frédéric admires it only briefly; he seems preoccupied. ‘The buildings are so dark,
so English
,’ he exclaims, and I know coming from a Frenchman this is close to an insult. Having imagined Sydney as a city of pale Mediterranean colours, yawning windows and balconies, he is amazed by the severe, liver-brick façades rimming the lower north shore. Determined to draw his attention to the beauty of the harbour, I keep up my tourist guide gaiety.

‘That’s Circular Quay. Ooh look, a ferry!’

But Frédéric is too busy making aesthetic improvements. ‘They’d look much better painted,’ he mutters about the brick apartment blocks. ‘Why such small windows in a sunny country?’

After spending a couple of hours catching up with my parents, we decide to walk to Whale Beach, only five minutes away. By now it is midday and the sun is drumming down. ‘That’ll wake us up,’ I say, jetlagged but bursting with happiness at being reunited with my family, at being back home, anticipating how much Frédéric is going to enjoy this swim.

As the footpath curls around a corner, the gum trees part and we suddenly have a breathtaking view of the beach.

‘Why is everyone swimming in exactly the same spot?’ Frédéric stares in astonishment at the dark patch of bodies on an otherwise gloriously empty stretch of sand.

‘You have to swim between the flags,’ I explain, indicating the surf lifeguards. ‘It makes it easier for them to survey the beach.’ But the logic of this wasted space seems lost on Frédéric. His Gallic sense of pride in flouting regulations can’t fathom such meek compliance. He teases me as we continue down the hill, ‘You Australians are real wimps!’

As we near the water, passing the yellow warning signs signalling a blue-bottle deluge and a dangerous current, his cockiness wanes. Although from higher up they’d looked unthreatening, in reality the waves are wild, breaking so close to the shore that we are repeatedly knocked off our feet just trying to get in. ‘Come out a bit deeper!’ I call after he’s been slammed into the sand several times. Frédéric doesn’t reply. He glares at me darkly: no way is he going to risk getting strangled by alien jellyfish or sucked all the way to Auckland by a killer current. And so there he stays, right
where the waves are exploding, in the mistaken belief that the shallow waters are safer. He’s like a jack-in-the-box, constantly disappearing and then springing up in a knee-high swirl of foam, gasping for breath. ‘It’s too violent,’ he shouts above the crashing water, getting out. Shaken, afterwards he challenges me:

‘You call this a
beach
?’

Mum and Dad had already met Frédéric last year on a trip to France, where they’d all hit it off wonderfully. On this holiday he meets my brother and sister for the first time. Although they have their own places they join us frequently for dinner. We spend long evenings on the balcony overlooking the sea, drinking my parents’ nascent wine cellar. Some nights Frédéric and I go into the city and stay with friends. Sue and her husband Andrew have now returned from London and we crash frequently at their apartment in Bronte.

After a few days, Frédéric’s European sensibilities seem to adjust. By the end of the first week, he is relaxed and sunburned and feeling right at home. He’s even getting used to the ‘violent’ sea although he remains wary, never venturing further than waist-deep. Next thing we know he is unpacking his brushes and watercolours: he’s feeling inspired! His paintings of Australia capture details and scenes that surprise him: the brightly coloured rosellas which jig on our balcony, a hibiscus bloom, the beach and even Sydney Harbour, all rendered in singing colours which contrast starkly with his habitual, muted palette.