23

A Romantic and a Belated Pragmatist

From the moment I receive the job offer, Alistair is not happy. In fact that is an understatement. For several days afterwards, I wake at night to find the space next to me empty and Alistair downstairs, either on his phone or with a glass of wine. The lack of sleep doesn’t help him to temper his emotions. He veers wildly between anger at me and inconsolable sadness. And it is breaking my heart.

For the past few weeks, I have been attending further ‘induction’ days as required by my visa conditions. Since I’ve been in limbo — not knowing whether or not to extend my carte de séjour —I have been turning up to these sessions just in case.

The instruction has been highly informative, and entertaining. Our formatrice (instructor) for the first two weeks is a wonderful woman called Nicole, who is extremely jolly and jokey. She talks us through all the different ways France is carved up — regions, departments and communes — then the principles on which the country is founded. She shows us the four symbols of the République: the tricolore (French flag); the ‘Marseillaise’ (the national anthem); Marianne (a fictional character, shown wearing a revolutionary bonnet); and finally le coq (the rooster). Nicole asks ‘Does anyone know why the rooster?’ ‘Ooh-ooh,’ I say, with Hermione Granger-like eagerness. ‘Because the revolution was the dawn of a new day!’ Nicole looks over her glasses and smiles. ‘C’est très jolie, mais non!’ (that’s very pretty, but no). The explanation, far duller than mine, is that under the Romans, France was called Gaulle, and ‘gallus’ in Latin means cockerel.

Nicole makes the sessions fun and interactive, and I warm to her further when one afternoon, she looks around her room full of immigrants. We are a mixed bunch: me (English, Kiwi, South American), Moroccan, African, Japanese, Algerian, Turkish. After surveying us all, she launches into a monologue about the role of immigration in France. She talks about Senegalese-born poet and writer Léopold Sédar Senghor, who fought in the French army, was imprisoned by the Germans and went on to become president of Senegal. ‘He has a street named after him, right here!’ she says animatedly. She tells us about an immigrant in Grenoble who is testing an anti-cancer vaccine. She doesn’t say it outright, but her impromptu speech has ‘You are so welcome here’ written all over it.

One lunchtime, she taps me on the shoulder. ‘Would you be interested in translating, at days like these?’ she asks. Hugely flattered, I say ‘Well, yes.’ The sessions are all in French and some attendees have translators murmuring quietly at their elbow. A translating role appeals enormously. Not only would it be much-needed income, but I’d be helping people to integrate. People who, as I’ve already mentioned, might be here not to follow a dream but to escape a nightmare.

On the third induction day, Nicole is replaced by a far more severe tutor who insists on being addressed as Monsieur G, won’t let us drink coffee, then bangs the desk of one student who is nodding off to sleep in the stuffy room. But he’s extremely knowledgeable and over just three hours rattles through all the high points of French history. Not for the first time, I feel honoured to even be temporarily living in a country with a history as rich as this. Yes, that past includes colonialism and present-day France has its ugly sides, not least the rise of Le Pen and the far right. But to be able to lay claim to a proud revolutionary tradition, to me that is still quite something.

Yet what of me and Alistair? What about the man I truly believed was finally my chance at lasting love?

The problem was we became infatuated quickly. I say ‘infatuated’, because how can you love someone when you don’t know them? If we did fall in love, it was with the idea of us. With our whole unwritten story. If we were ever shoulder to shoulder in anything, it was in our unspoken mission. To prove to the world that age is no barrier to passion and adventure (I still believe that, by the way). And our remedy to the shortest dating period ever? A ‘boots and all’ approach: We will MAKE it work by being in a situation where the stakes are too high for it not to. Was that love or lunacy — and are they really that different?

If I did fall in love with Alistair, I honestly can’t pinpoint when I fell out of it. Is falling out of love the work of a moment — a piece of vulnerability, a look, a comment, a tone that suddenly rings false? Is it an accumulation of all of the above, bubbling away over time? Or is it that you fall out of love with who you are when you are around him/her/them?

So many questions. Yet one thing I know for sure is that if I leave, I will miss Alistair intensely. How could I not, when we have been together so constantly for well over a year? When everything falls into place, when our moods chime and all is going well, we revel in each other’s company. We can talk for hours (though we still don’t laugh enough). I also have a huge level of admiration for him. For holding tight to his dream — for seeing the beauty and magic in an old mill that many would dismiss as too cold, too impractical, too down-at-heel. The mill was never meant to be lived in, and even after it was converted into accommodation status it was pretty rough and ready. Alistair has had to work hard — mentally and physically — to outwit the constant winter draughts, keep the flooding at bay when the river pours over the banks, do battle with obstinate utility companies to ensure a steady gas supply, wage war on the overgrown gardens, and a myriad of other challenges that would have broken a lesser man. Or that would have had many 60-something men reaching for the ‘lock and leave’ property brochures. But he’s stoic. And he’s a romantic. His passion for the river, for the sheer poetry of the place … perhaps that’s what I fell in love with. His lyrical Irish spirit.

Alistair wanted me to be the love of his life. But I believe the mill can probably lay claim to that. I no longer want to be part of destroying whatever magic they have between them. I want him to find his paradise again.

It makes practical sense to leave, to resume my life in Auckland. But — and pardon me if I quote myself here — ‘Just because something makes sense doesn’t make it easy.’ That is what I said at the start of this tale, and it holds true now.

It’s a cruel irony that just as you are mentally preparing to leave a place, it starts to embrace you. It begins to reveal its deeper self, it takes your hand and says gently: ‘Must you really go?’

Maybe this is where I have also gone wrong — thinking it was all down to me, that settling in was something I could plan for and make happen. Yes, you can play a part, and I have. You can polish your French grammar, you can smile like a fiend at every single person you meet, say ‘yes’ and ‘yes’ and ‘yes’ again. Ultimately though, it’s really a matter of time. There is a point at which the place comes to you.

And so it is that after the job offer, I find myself having longer conversations with Annette, owner of the minimart off the square. We’ve always smiled and nodded and exchanged niceties, but we’re slowly moving on from that. She is warm and always interested in what you have to say; her eagerness to chat is genuine. I feel she is someone I could befriend.

In the hairdresser (where they charge a mere 60 euros for full colour, treatment, cut and le brushing — blow-dry), I bump into our lovely Norwegian friend, and we sit and talk for hours. I am cheating age with a root touch-up while she is making peace with it, letting her thick hair return to grey. Sipping our tea and chattering away under our foils, it feels cosy and familiar. It feels like fitting in.

Then in the Boutique d’à Côté one morning, I see a figure crouched down, sweeping up some broken glass with a dustpan and brush. Realising it is Alain — who volunteers in the shop and was on the clown course with me — I tap him on the shoulder and say his clown name. ‘Esmonde!’ Before the course, Alain and I never had much to say to one another. Now however he leaps up and there is genuine delight in his eyes as he goes in for an enthusiastic hug. There is something about this encounter that is deeply moving. Even Alistair comments on it. ‘Wow, he really was happy to see you!’

At the counter with our bulging basket of veges, cheese, meat and eggs, we realise we don’t have money for the 48 euro bill. We have bank cards, but in smaller shops and even hairdressers, it’s common for them to accept only espèces (cash) and cheque. ‘So sorry,’ we tell Madame D, one half of the couple who run the place and who is working on the till. ‘Would you mind keeping our bags while we race to the ATM?’ On our return we ask, ‘It was 48 euros, wasn’t it?’ ‘No,’ says Madame D gravely. ‘Now it’s 52.’ Then she laughs, and we laugh, and are flattered at the gentle mockery that comes from familiarity.

Silly little moments that say in a big voice ‘Now you are starting to belong.’

Am I really able to leave all of this? Am I really ready to go?