7
Throughout the night of the twenty-third and the twenty-fourth of June 2016, good citizens of Britain who should have been slumbering comfortably in their cotton PJs were instead wide awake and feverishly counting slips of paper. The sum total of these electoral officials’ calculations was a bombshell.
At the time I was living and working for a magazine company in Auckland and (I’m SO ashamed of this now) hadn’t paid much attention to the furore surrounding the Brexit referendum. And when I did, it was to listen to some of the only voices I deem sane in politics — those of the revolutionary left. Ah, that surprised you, didn’t it? But yes. Their argument boiled down to ‘What has the EU ever done for the person in the street?’ They had a point. All over Europe the EU had been hard at it foisting austerity measures on workers.
When a British colleague in the office burst into tears on hearing that Britain had severed its European ties, I thought she was being melodramatic. Turns out she had a point too.
My nonchalance at this seismic event comes back to haunt me now that I wish to remain in France. British passport holders now have three months in which to saunter around châteaux or order pastis on a Parisian terrace. Then it’s ‘Au revoir’ — see you in another 90 days.
I’d initially thought this was no big deal. (Do you sense a pattern here?) If my right to stay in France expired at 90 days, I would nip over the southern border and hang out in Barcelona for a couple of weeks, renew my visa online and head back. How I laugh now at that naivety. Because the 90-day rule covers the entire EU. You can’t simply bide your time ordering tapas in a Catalonian bar. It’s back to Britain with you until your three months have lapsed.
To apply for a year-long visa, therefore, I must return to London and get my application processed at the TLS — an agency that deals with the bureaucratic tedium on behalf of the French government.
What is interesting is all the chaos and misinformation surrounding the necessary paperwork. ‘Mais non!’ is the general reaction. Because the fallout from Brexit is only just registering in the national psyche, our French friends are shocked that I have to leave the country. Most of the English people they know emigrated or bought homes here before the rupture, so they’re used to it being a straightforward and relatively benign procedure.
Marianne insists all I have to do is go to the local préfecture (the regional administration office attached to the Ministry of the Interior) to get my ‘carte de séjour’ (residence permit). I should chat to a lady called Valérie, she advises. ‘She is SO nice; she will ’elp you!’ I may be naive, but even I know it can’t be that simple. The French are famous for their red tape, a legacy of the Napoleonic period. The diminutive general set in train changes that gave the state strong centralised power and left France trussed in bureaucratic bondage. So it seems implausible that all I have to do is take a couple of pains au chocolat to a lady named Valérie and I’m sweet for the next year.
Still, Alistair and I decide to try our luck with the civil servants at the sous-préfecture some 30 minutes away. What’s this ‘sous’ business, I hear you ask? Each administrative départment has a préfecture. But the departments are divided into arrondissements, and these have a sub-prefecture. The one near us is decidedly ‘sous’. It couldn’t be more self-effacing if it tried. The entrance is through a side door, the waiting room is tiny, and beyond a glass-windowed counter two men sit at computers in a space of hutch proportions. Their PCs appear to have beamed down from the 1990s, and the area is dimly lit and really quite sad. Yet the chap who comes to the window is chirpiness itself. He, too, is horrified to hear the rumour that I need to leave the country when my 90 days are up. He seems to consider this an affront to his personal standards of hospitality. The man exudes concern, like a party host who’s just realised you’ve been standing there for fifteen minutes and still don’t have a glass. ‘Mais non!’ He looks over at Alistair and asks if he is my husband. I say no and struggle for the word for ‘partner’. ‘Concubine,’ says Alistair, grinning. ‘Well then!’ says the man, heartily relieved. For him, the matter is settled. If we’re a couple, and Alistair lives here, then it’s out of the question that we should be separated. If only it were that simple.
Sadly this affable man has no powers to grant a visa, and suggests we try the préfecture.
We pick a day to drive to the préfecture, an hour away by car. We have a spring in our step, but then so did Dorothy on her way to meet the wizard.
At the préfecture — suitably grandiose unlike its little sous-underling — a security guard steps forward to apprehend us before we even get a chance to approach the front door. We tell him our business and he asks us to wait. A few minutes later, a woman appears. She wears stern black-rimmed spectacles, her dark hair up in a tight bun and she carries a clipboard. She’s the sort of person you simply can’t picture ever being a child; I imagine she came out of the womb a fully-formed civil servant, and that her first words were ‘Do you have an appointment?’ This is clearly not a Valérie-type situation. This is where it starts to get real.
With the security guard still hovering, she asks us how she can help. ‘I’d like to renew my visa — I am a British/New Zealand citizen …’ She doesn’t let me finish. ‘No, you must go back to where you came from to apply. To London.’
‘But I didn’t come from London!’ I protest. ‘I flew here from New Zealand.’
‘Oh, well go back there then,’ she says casually. She’s really not getting it.
‘But I don’t live there anymore!’
She starts to look both impatient and confused. ‘Where do you live?’
‘Here! With him!’ I say, pointing to Alistair — hoping the concubine thing will move her as it did her sous-préfecture colleague. Not a chance.
She looks at Alistair for a moment, as if to say, ‘What, you couldn’t find anything better than this in France?’
Then back at me. ‘It makes no difference. You must leave.’
I am getting a strong inkling this ‘You must leave business’ now also applies to this immediate turf.
I try to explain that I don’t have an address anywhere but here. That I left it all to be at Alistair’s side. I don’t know why I am appealing to this woman’s romantic sensibilities when there is more warmth coming from the granite façade of the building behind her. I am starting to feel upset and afraid, a child lost in the great mall of life. She peers over her glasses and says sorry in a very un-sorry way. ‘This is the way it is now.’
Then she deploys it. The B word. It comes down with a kerthunk, like a government stamp on a document. ‘Brexit!’ It’s uttered almost gleefully, with a tone of ‘Well, you should have thought of this before you voted “leave”.’
‘But I hate Brexit too,’ I bleat, a lump forming in my throat.
She’s already turning to go.
Alistair and I look at each other, defeated, and with time running out.
I don’t like border regulations. They are mean-spirited and petty. True, I am not an African or Syrian refugee being tossed in the ocean in an unseaworthy boat, fearing for my life. I am lucky. I have options. (I have much to say on the refugee score, too. If I had my way, people who are simply trying to build a better life or flee war and persecution wouldn’t get shipped off to Rwanda but put up at the Hilton.)
Surely a better system could be conceived. Maybe a test of some sort to judge your commitment to the place. Something not based on how much money you have and where you come from.
I say this partly because of my socialist ideals. But mostly because the mayor (he of the mussels) practically conferred honorary citizenship on me at a recent fête when he saw me diving into a bowl of miget. This traditional staple consists of cheap red wine, stale bread and sugar. I didn’t mean to order it. I was at the bar, hoping Alistair would grab me a chilled rosé. Our neighbour Antoine insisted I try the miget. ‘Don’t do it,’ warned Alistair.
A large red-faced man at the bar heard this exchange and motioned for me to go over. ‘Vas-y, try mine,’ he said with a drunken leer. I recoiled, partly because I didn’t know him from Adam and slurping from his bowl seemed neither polite nor hygienic. He was very insistent, as the inebriated often are. He called for a spoon and handed it to me. I scooped up a blob of soggy, wine-infused bread and said, ‘Hmmm.’ It was meant to be non-committal but Antoine took this as a positive review and ordered me one. Suddenly I was surrounded by locals wanting to see the English woman drink the miget. It was strong. It was sickly sweet. It was very bread-y. It was like the evil stepmother of sangria, or a trifle that had got in with the wrong crowd.
‘What the hell,’ I said to myself and kept going, eager to please my audience. Our friend Charlotte, visiting from Tours, hissed at me to stop. ‘You will be so sick tomorrow — you never know what dégueulasse (revolting) wine they put in there!’
Among the onlookers was Marcel, the mayor; who, Alistair told me later, clapped him on the back and congratulated him on having a partner who so readily embraced the local rustic traditions. ‘Honestly, he was ready to grant you citizenship there and then,’ said Alistair. Sadly no mayor has that power.
I didn’t even get a hangover.
I leave for London at the end of September, to stay at my brother’s house while I get the visa sorted. As temporary exiles go, it’s extremely pleasant. My brother and sister-in-law Fiona are fun, welcoming, live near a park with deer, and it really is home away from home. They also have an adorable cockapoo, Guinness, and I’ve been missing dog time. And after all, this is why I yearned to return to Europe. Not just to be nearer to authentic tapas and Italian architecture, but also to family.
On the day of the visa appointment, I turn up twenty minutes early to the offices of the TLS in Wandsworth. I am clutching my file of hopeful documents. Among them are a typed statement from Alistair saying he is sponsoring me and that even if I lose my current work he will have my back; two copies of a long, sycophantic letter (Alistair’s excellent idea), one in French and one in English, saying how much I love France, the food, the language, the culture and that I intend to write flattering travel articles about the place (true). Also copies of my passport, bank statements, job references, proof of income, police certificate, references from past employers and a whole bunch of other bits and pieces they never asked for.
The queue grows very long, but it’s just past 2 p.m. so I am glad I am in first.
Three hours later I get my turn at the kiosk. It turns out everybody had the same time slot — 2 p.m. was simply when they opened the doors.
Once they’ve checked my paperwork and I’ve parted with not far short of a hundred quid, I’m shunted into another waiting room for the final stage of the process: the fingerprinting. There are at least 30 people waiting, all staring at the blank wall in front of us like they have lost the will to live, let alone recall why they wanted a visa in the first place. I am so ravenous, I am willing to trade both my citizenships for a chunk of chocolate or a date scone.
To pass the time I engage in chit-chat with the young woman next to me. When I tell her that I haven’t had lunch she looks horrified, and in plummy Princess Diana tones exclaims, ‘Oh God nooo; would you care for some of my bagel?’ I decline. On hearing the young woman tell me she has landed a job in a French ski chalet, two girls on either side of me squeal, with identical Sloane Ranger vowels, ‘Oh raahlly? How funny! We are doing the chalet season toooo!’ So yes, there I am with the young and effervescent Ski Chalet Three, feeling like a stale white-bread sandwich in the middle of a plate of smoked-salmon blinis.
On my way out, with my fingerprinting done, they wave and wish me a hearty ‘Good luck!’ Bless.
After weeks of waiting, having convinced myself that the French have laughed themselves silly over my grovelling cover letter then stamped my file with a ‘Non!’, a registered envelope arrives at my brother’s house. It’s my passport, and inside is a year-long visa.