Almost French (39 page)

When people ask how long I’ve been in France now I can scarcely believe my own reply. Six years. Has it really been that long? In many ways the time seems to have passed at lightning speed; it’s a kaleidoscopic blur. Yet when I think back to arriving in Paris in my camel-coloured shorts, my mind plays another trick and that day seems more like twenty years ago than six. It’s like a snapshot from a past life although in reality it was the beginning of a new one. Remembering makes me wonder whether the girl in the image is really me. How much has France changed me?

For a brief moment the other day I thought I’d changed radically—at least in appearance. Walking down Rue Montorgueil an American tourist startled me by taking my photo. ‘She’s so Pareesyanne,’ he exclaimed to his wife, loudly, apparently assuming I couldn’t understand English. And then, click! Immortalised in someone’s holiday album as the ultimate
Parisienne
! I imagined his family in the Midwest cooing over my French style. I couldn’t wait to tell Frédéric. I felt ecstatic. ‘Such a cuuute dog-gie!’ added the tourist, and with dismay I realised the lens pointed at the street, that it was Maddie who was immortalised, not me, Maddie who after three hours of de luxe dog grooming looked so picture-perfect Parisian.

Apart from the obvious irritation at being upstaged by my dog (yet again), why should this have mattered? Why should I have been so delighted by the idea of looking quintessentially Parisian in the first place? It’s not as though I’m hung up on wanting to look French. Yet believing for one brief moment that the tourist was talking about me was an undeniable thrill. No-one has ever said I looked French before. In France I’m used to standing out as foreign. The worst is when a shopkeeper or passer-by addresses me in English
even before I’ve opened my mouth
. Quite apart from my accent, my appearance seems to give me away.

Of course, looking foreign gives you exotic appeal and sometimes the attention is very nice. ‘Are you English? American?’ a handsome man enquired as I waited for friends in Juveniles wine bar. He offered me some of his Château Margaux, causing me to mentally cancel the modest Pays d’Oc red I’d been about to order. When my friends arrived he shook my hand and filled my glass with the remaining expensive Bordeaux. ‘A Parisian welcome,’ he said charmingly, and was gone.

‘How do people know I’m not French if I haven’t even said anything?’ I quiz Frédéric later.

‘Because you look Anglo-Saxon.’

I frown. Living in France you’re constantly reading and hearing about the Enemy Anglo-Saxons who have conspired to globalise planet Earth and destroy the French culture and language. It’s as though we’re one massive army of insidious insects, invading France with our fast food and foreign words such as
le weekend
and
un break
and expressions like
surfer sur le net
.

‘What do you mean?’ I ask. He considers me for a second, choosing his words.

‘Well, er, it’s just that you could never be mistaken for French. I mean, you look less Anglo-Saxon than before. But you don’t
look
French.’

‘Why, though? Is it my clothes? My walk? My hair?’

‘It’s everything.’

His nebulous answer doesn’t satisfy me but later, mulling it over, I discern some meaning in what he’d said. Although sometimes I’d like to be able to switch off the neon sign beaming ‘Anglo-Saxon’ from my unaccountably Anglo-Saxon forehead, you can’t pretend to be something you’re not. I am an Australian living in France and the reality is my foreign status is almost permanent. I could stay here thirty years, even take out French nationality, but that won’t change how people perceive me. My identity in my new homeland is defined by my country of origin. ‘
C’est la petite demoiselle australienne au téléphone
,’ the lady at the butcher shop told one of the butchers when I called to place an order. It wasn’t said in a patronising manner, simply by way of identification.

In some ways, living in France has made me feel more Australian. Separation heightens your sentimentality. I sat in my office and cried watching the opening ceremony of the Sydney Olympics. Lately I’ve taken to buying big bunches of gum leaves from the florist. Occasionally, I’ll pick off a leaf and scrunch it up to smell the eucalyptus oil, just like I used to do passing trees back home. Sometimes I fear turning into a ridiculous parody of my old self, still using expressions like ‘daggy’ and ‘unreal!’ because they were part of everyday speech when I left.

But the girl who got off the plane from Bucharest all those years ago
has
changed. I might not look the archetypal
Parisienne
but living in France with a Frenchman, osmosis has occurred without even noticing it. That fight with Frédéric
over what to wear to the bakery was more than four years ago. And I haven’t worn tracksuit pants since.

They’ve been chucked out along with my shapeless T-shirts and baggy woolly jumpers, which were donated to a local homeless couple who to my knowledge have never worn them. The scuffed, beloved Doc Marten’s haven’t stepped outside in years—in France, their clumpy form screams ‘Anglo-Saxon!’. Just as my mother started bringing only her best clothes to Paris, I have been influenced by the city too. I no longer race outside with washed, wet hair—a major concession for someone who hates blow-drying. Comfort is still my priority and pants my preference, but for the first time in my life I now have one or two flirty skirts, some delicate, strappy sandals, lots of close-fitting tops and even a couple of pairs of (practically unworn) heels. I’ve followed the advice of Inès de La Fressange too, and now buy fewer clothes but pay more. As for shorts, the only time I wear them is on holiday in Sydney.

The style victories haven’t been totally one-sided, though. Frédéric’s silk neckscarves have been banished. I don’t care that they belonged to his arty grandfather. ‘They make you look like a walking Gallic cliché,’ I’d grumble, which only made him retort, ‘
Et alors
? What’s wrong with that?’ At last I’d said meanly, ‘They’re ageing,’ which had the desired effect. The scarves now stay in his wardrobe. A curious swap has even occurred. While I buy all my clothes in Paris, Frédéric saves up his shopping for annual trips to Sydney, where he prefers the slightly looser cuts and the wide selection of casual men’s wear, that is partly a product of our climate. His wardrobe now includes R.M. William stock boots (which he maintains in a state of polished perfection), bright board shorts for the beach and Country Road shirts.

But it isn’t just my clothes that have changed: the way I think has been influenced too. For example, I’ve become used to the Latin approach to rules and regulations. The wonderful words ‘
on peut s’arranger
’ (we can do a deal) which contain so many possibilities. In comparison, Australia sometimes seems a bit over-regulated. On one holiday in Sydney, Frédéric had lunch in the city centre with Sue’s husband, Andrew, and came back railing that my country is ‘not a democracy’. He’d been at an outdoor café smoking a slim cigar when a woman sitting nearby had demanded he put it out. ‘I was outside,’ he’d repeated, scandalised. I thought her reaction was scandalous too.

On another trip home a policeman pulled me over for turning left onto Military Road at an intersection where you’re only allowed to make the turn between certain hours. I was twenty minutes too late. I stepped confidently from my car, believing that for such a minor demeanour he would simply reprimand me. (What’s a few minutes? The truth was I hadn’t seen the sign until it was too late.) But he was already writing out my ticket before he’d even heard my excuse. I thought of the times in France I’ve been pulled over for committing similar traffic offences in hire cars, the numerous occasions I’ve been caught on trains without the required dog ticket for Maddie. And not one fine. You just smile and invent some unlikely excuse and invariably the conductor or police officer lets you off. It’s not flirting, exactly, because although police officers are mainly men I’ve seen guys let off too. It’s more a matter of using charm to appeal to their good natures. As the unflappable Aussie cop wrote out the ticket my indignation rose. Oh to be in Paris where I would receive a wink and a warning.

Back in Australia I find myself arguing why French should
remain one of the official Olympic languages even though hardly anyone speaks it; why champagne only comes from Champagne, earnestly championing the cause of José Bové, the cheese-making French activist with a handlebar moustache who smashed up a McDonald’s outlet in protest against globalisation. At least the French are making a stand against American imperialism, I spout, surprising friends with my jargon. The irony of these situations doesn’t escape me: in France I may stand out as foreign yet in Australia I feel a bit foreign too.

Such is the nature of expatriate life. ‘Betwixt and between’ was how one Paris-based American writer described having two homelands at a literary evening I attended. Stripped of romance, perhaps that’s what being an expat is all about: a sense of not wholly belonging. After six years in France I feel like an insider. Having a French partner is a huge help, of course. But at the same time I’m still an outsider. And not just because of my accent or Anglo-Saxon appearance. To be a true insider you need that historical superglue spun from things like French childhood friends and memories of school holidays on the grandparents’ farm and centuries of accumulated culture and complications.

This insider–outsider dichotomy gives life a degree of tension. Not of a needling, negative variety but rather a keep-you-on-your-toes sort of tension that can plunge or peak with sudden rushes of love or anger. One moment, living here makes my spirits soar; I adore these cultivated people with their intriguing idiosyncrasies. The next, I’m swearing and thinking terrible thoughts about how Paris would be perfect if it weren’t for Parisians. Some days the city appears cold and stony; at other times it is lit by sunbeams of gold. No day leaves you indifferent.

Everyday incidences elevate into moments of clarity simply because they would never, ever happen in your old home. I have accumulated hundreds of these vignettes which would seem random to anyone else, but to me are precious for their intrinsic Frenchness.

Being stopped in the street by a terribly chic blonde who advises me to use eye-makeup remover on Maddie’s leaky eyes (any old brand will do but her dog likes Lancôme), and I’m so captured by her charm that the absurdity of the conversation escapes me. The sunny Sunday afternoon we went to see an exhibition of wartime photographs of Nazi concentration camps, expecting it to be empty—who wants to look at morbid images on a lovely spring day?—only to find half the city queuing to get through the door, the museum overflowing with Parisians silently examining each picture. Places like La Palette, where the owner François will treat you precisely as it pleases him, so that one day it’s all kisses and handshakes and the next you’re snapped at to wait over there until he feels like showing you to a table. The interview with actor Kristin Scott Thomas who described being stopped outside her Left Bank apartment by a fan, whose words took her totally by surprise. Not, ‘can I have your autograph?’ or ‘I really liked
The English Patient
’, but a message of tender grace: ‘Thank you for the emotion.’ Touched by the memory, she’d looked at me and shrugged and I understood exactly what she meant. Where else in the world would someone actually say that?

There is a certain comfort—serenity even—which comes from being able to see my experiences in this country as a whole: the good with the bad, the bitter with the sweet. Having emerged from the fog of the early difficulties—trying to get work as a journalist and make sense of my new home,
not to mention my new boyfriend—I can see it has been incredibly enriching, even if it didn’t always seem so at the time. Many people find the expatriate experience makes them stronger and more adaptable. I would say in my case it’s had the dual effect of making me more self-sufficient while at the same tightening the bond with Frédéric, who is not only the reason I came to France but also the person who has shared the subsequent journey. For me the experience has also been humbling. Cultural misunderstandings make for snap judgments. People I dismissed as cold and unfriendly have become friends.
It just takes time in France
. Frédéric had said so a zillion times. He was right.

It’s an experience that has left me fundamentally the same—and profoundly changed. Which makes me wonder sometimes what it would be like to return to live in Australia now. Would life seem a bit dull without the tickle of tension? Would Frédéric be happy there? Would it seem like home? One day we might make the move, not in the near future but maybe later. It would be great for Frédéric to experience living in another country, because although widely travelled, he has only ever lived in France. And it would be great for me to be close again to family and friends, even if only for a few years.

Being so far away from home means you necessarily miss out on some things. You’re not always there to celebrate weddings, milestone birthdays, you barely know your friends’ children. I’m very lucky in that my parents come frequently to France and so do some of my close friends. And these holidays together are wonderful. But the physical distance separating us is insoluble and regular contact through phone calls and e-mails can’t quite bridge it. You are no longer familiar with the intricacies of their daily lives, and neither do they know yours.

Whether or not we ever live in Australia my heart will always be tied to two places, now. Meeting Frédéric means my future is irrevocably linked to France. A decision has been made that makes that a certainty.