C'est La Folie by Michael Wright

Author:Michael Wright
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781446422052
Publisher: Transworld

28

FEBRUARY: DREAMING IN FRENCH

Winter creeps onward at La Folie. Day after day, Serge and the masons appear, and their hammering ransacks the silence. The trees are still bare, but the sheep grow shaggier by the week. I cannot wait for the day when Gilles will come and shear their wool, two years in the tangling.

On the phone, my mother often asks me if I am dreaming in French yet, in the same tone that she asks me if the bathroom in the maison des amis is ever going to be finished. Mum proudly remembers dreaming in French when she was propping up the suspended-ceiling business in Paris in the 1950s, and this is therefore the family yardstick by which to judge whether or not I am fully Frenchified.

Though I cannot yet claim such a qualification, my French must be improving, because the locals have stopped making polite comments about it. Indeed, now that my linguistic manglings are no longer a talking point, I begin to suspect that the phrase I used to hear – Ah, vous parlez bien le français! – really means ‘Your French is charmingly hopeless, but well done for trying.’ Alarmingly, most of les Anglais don’t.

I want to hide when I hear people in the paper-shop demanding cigarettes in English, with not so much as a s’il vous plaît to acknowledge that we are in someone else’s country. And then there’s the English woman trying to buy meat in Champion, yelling ‘Mince! MINCE! MINCE!’ at the bemused assistant, in a misguided quest for steak hâché that sounds more like she’s barking instructions at a Butlin’s drag act.

Though my own vocabulary is patchy – and my accent is heavily influenced by Inspector Clouseau – I am quite strong on useful things such as ovine intestinal conditions, bathroom fittings and Things To Shout Whilst Playing Tennis. Thus Allez, allez! is how one encourages an octogenarian doubles partner to hobble after a lob, Gourmand! means ‘Why did I go for that blasted volley?’ and Bien servi is what you mutter when you’ve just been aced by a twelve-year-old.

My favourite new word is les perce-neige – snowdrops – because, bless them, these perfect flowers have finally arrived at La Folie, bowing their heads at each van and lorry that rattles up the drive. I have never in my life felt excited about a flower, but I almost gasped at the sight of these, their innocent beauty gathered into dazzling clumps like children at a first communion. Flowers, I begin to see, are not simply pretty things that grow. They are part of some huge clock, too; harbingers of a different season; a promise of better times to come. Spring cannot now be far away.

‘Do you really think they can understand you?’ asks Serge the mason, leaning on his shovel. He has just caught me chatting to the chickens. As you do. Indeed, you’d be surprised how much there is to say to a chicken, when you live alone and don’t have a telly.

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