Long Slow Affair of the Heart, A by Ansley Bruce

Author:Ansley, Bruce [Bruce Ansley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781877460210
Publisher: Random House New Zealand
Published: 2010-09-24T04:00:00+00:00

We went up a long flight of locks with our personal lock-keeper. He was a handsome man with lots of curly dark hair and graceful gestures and Sally voted him cutest lock-keeper in all France.

He saw the silver fern. He loved le rugby. He loved the All Blacks. What did I think of the Wallabies? Mugs? He bounced around the lock with glee. Mugs! he called. Mugs! passers-by called back. Sally loved him.

At last we reached a long, peaceful stretch on the summit. Our lock-keeper went off with arms full of wine.

We were on the second highest canal in France. Graceful trees brushed our cabin-top, villages snoozed in the sun.

We stopped for the night beside the little village of Chamousey, where we bought delicious charlottes: mousse encased in sponge with red and white currants and raspberries on top. They came in little gold boxes. We ate them on the boat, watching three women and a little girl playing statues on a green lawn surrounded by red roses. Their grace delighted us, the warm evening lulled.

Three little boys came to fish. They caught four, the size of herrings, and put them in a bucket of water. They asked politely for a drink of water. Sally poured them some juice. They could speak a little English, which they were learning in school.

How old were they? she asked. They told her: two were eleven and one twelve. ‘Et vous?’ one asked. Sally told them. They looked at each other. ‘Wow,’ they said in French. ‘They are a hundred and sixty years old.’ They offered me a fishing line. We talked about France. We talked about New Zealand. They asked about kangaroos, which they pronounced kung-aroos.

‘Do you like the Vosges?’ one asked. I was startled. The Vosges? I remembered a sign, several locks back. Of course. That was where we were. The Vosges. I’d fallen into the lassitude of tourism, not even certain where I was. But:

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It is very beautiful.’

Sally gave them two Florentines each. They looked at each other.

‘Perhaps you’d like fish for dinner,’ one said. He offered the bucket. Sally was touched. ‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘but we have dinner already.’ She gestured at the kitchen, where vegetables for a salad lay on the table.

The boys looked relieved. They gripped the bucket and set off for home. ‘Au revoir.’

By now it was past seven o’clock. There’d been no anxious calls from home, across the canal. France always seemed safe to us, and the boys’ parents evidently agreed.

The evening fell into slumberous dark. We were alone, for the town had only a single mooring.

New Zealand seemed light-years away, and just as remote when we reached Forges d’Uzemain.

The village had all but disappeared. No matter how small the place, it could usually boast four essentials: a boulangerie, a café/bar, a beauty parlour and a chemist.

Only the green neon cross of a pharmacy shone from what had been the main street of Forges d’Uzemain; the village had been honed down to its

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