Almost French (7 page)

My first print story was a profile on an elderly Romanian artist who produced wildly imaginative paintings on glass. Not exactly headline material. And it wouldn’t have mattered if I’d made it up, since there were probably no more than six people in the entire world who’d heard of the magazine, let alone ever read it. But I toiled over every word. I loved the novelty of interviewing armed only with a tiny tape-recorder instead of a crew and cumbersome camera equipment and lights. It was so satisfying just concentrating on writing, not having to worry about pictures.

And so in Paris the idea of embarking on a career in print journalism takes hold. It has been one of my dreams for a while now, I realise. I’ve always loved reading well-written profiles and news features and magazines like
Vanity Fair
. Seeing your byline in a good publication must be such a buzz, I’ve often thought. Somehow it strikes me as far more thrilling than seeing my face on television. I decide to give freelancing for magazines and newspapers a whirl.

Through the Australian Embassy I consult a media guide which lists the contact details of magazine and newspaper editors in Australia. I also track down a few names in London by calling switchboards. The weeks crawl by in a one-way flood of faxes pitching story proposals to editors who have
never heard of me and do not care to, apparently. On a good day, I might receive a polite, negative response to an idea I can barely recall having.

Dear Sarah,

Thank you for your story suggestion. Unfortunately we do not take work from contributors …

(Wipe them off the list.)

Dear Sarah,

Thanks for the ideas but they do not suit the magazine …

(Honest at least, but not encouraging.)

Dear Sarah,

Thank you for your proposal. Unfortunately we have already commissioned a Paris correspondent to do the same story …

(What bad luck! What rotten timing! These replies go straight to the Try Again pile.)

But mostly, my painstakingly worded, desperately upbeat paperwork meets a crushing silence. Responses—even negative ones—are quite rare.
Be patient
,
it’ll take time, something will come off eventually
, I reassure myself as the hours drag by. My days are spent waiting: first for a fax, then later for Frédéric. Parisians don’t start work until about 9.30am but they also finish late and he is rarely home before nine. To keep myself busy, I do the grocery shopping and cook dinner. By the time he steps through the door, I am gagging to see him—to see anybody, actually. I need to talk, to off load, to
laugh, to have a drink. Each night we open a new bottle of wine, which will be empty by the end of dinner.

Frédéric is extremely supportive. He clips articles from French newspapers that might make potential stories and in the evenings we workshop ideas for me to turn into a fresh battery of proposals. By the time we go to sleep, I feel recharged. But our days are totally out of sync. After a stressful twelve hours at the office, he just wants to unwind at home. I, on the other hand, am itching for a change of scenery, having spent all day at the dining room table. Let’s go out for dinner, I sometimes suggest and to cheer me up Frédéric agrees. But usually it’s an effort for him. The local restaurants cater for the business lunch crowd and mostly shut at night, and the last thing he feels like is jumping back on the bike and heading into town.

As a full-time employee I used to dream of having abundant spare time, imagining all the ways I could fill it. But now that it’s limitless, it doesn’t feel like freedom. More like I’m free falling. Some days the sensation is exhilarating and the hours hang before me like opportunities. But mostly I’m praying for the parachute to open, the moment when my feet will plant firmly on the ground.

‘
C’est pour offrir, Monsieur
?’

We have stopped to buy flowers for Benoît and Sylvie, which is the done thing in Paris when you’re invited to someone’s home. My first Parisian dinner party. I don’t understand the florist’s question, but Frédéric says ‘
oui, merci
’, and then explains to me that she wants to know if the flowers are intended as a gift. The pretty violet and yellow tulips are expertly arranged in a fan and wrapped in clear cel
lophane lined with lemon tissue paper. Raffia tightly binds it all together. The florist staples her gold card and more wheat-coloured curls to the outside. Although simple, the finished bouquet looks lovely.

But it doesn’t stay that way. Flowers and motorbikes don’t travel well together—not an altogether astonishing discovery. One hand clinging to Frédéric, the other clutching the tulips, I struggle to shield them but they are whipped and snatched by the bitter wind. Halfway there, we are suddenly pelted with a deluge of hard little rocks which ricochet off our helmets and limbs. Hail. Continuing for a couple of precarious kilometres, we eventually pass beneath a bridge where we shelter until the storm eases.

There are approximately five petals clinging heroically to the tulip stems by the time we reach our destination on the other side of Paris. Ushered inside like a pair of sad, soggy dogs, we are immediately invited to peel off our wet outer layers. Our hosts, apparently accustomed to Frédéric arriving in all sorts of weather-beaten states bearing bouquets of naked stalks, bring us a couple of thick jumpers. Crumpled, frozen and forlorn, I haven’t travelled well on the motorbike either. My blue and white hands provoke a volley of ‘
Oh-la-la
’s’ and ‘
Ce n’est pas vrai
’s!’ from Sylvie and Benoît. She’s got terrible circulation, says Frédéric—the expert explaining the exhibit. Sylvie pulls a pair of ski gloves from a dusty cupboard. I enter the sitting room like a bedraggled boxer after a fight. How chic! What a style statement I make at my first Parisian dinner party.

To my surprise, none of the other guests looks particularly smart either. Somehow I’d assumed all Parisians were imbued with that amazing style you see in the streets. But the description that springs to mind now is ‘neat’. They all look
terribly tucked in. The women are mostly dressed in well-cut blazers with skirts or pants, and two of them are wearing headbands. The men all have dark trousers on and wear almost identical shirts—blue with fine white checks or the other way round. I’m introduced to a Nathalie, an Anne, a Caroline. So far so good. But the boys are a barrage of seemingly reversible double-barrels. Jean-François, Jean-Luc, Jean-Marc. (Or is it Luc-Jean? François-Jean? Marc-Jean?)

A few of them are lawyers, one’s an accountant, Anne works in publishing and Nathalie has a marketing job for a big French group. What surprises me is they don’t really look Frédéric’s type, these people. In comparison, he seems more youthful, far less formal. I tell myself this is all new: don’t judge by appearances.

A tray has been laid with a line-up of alcohol and bowls of nibbles that look like Cheezels and taste like peanut butter. I happen to love Cheezels (and peanut butter) but I’d expected something more sophisticated from the French. Olives, at least, or some fancy pâté on little toasts. Offered a choice of apéritifs, a couple of the guys take whiskey and the rest of us opt for muscat or port, which the French apparently drink before dinner. Pulling off my gloves, I spy a couple of bottles of wine near the dining table. I’d kill for a glass of red but it’s obvious they are being saved to have with our meal.

‘
Tu es Anglaise? Américaine?
’

‘
Je suis Australienne
,’ I manage to reply to the fellow next to me. A faint ripple of interest spreads across the room. Compared to the English and American communities in Paris, the number of Australians is small which makes us more of a curiosity. For French people, Australia looms in their imaginations like a mythical final frontier which they dream of visiting but never will because twenty-three hours
in a plane would be
insupportable
. Still, while none of them have ever been there, this group seems pretty well informed about my homeland.

A slim fellow—Jean-Marc or Marc-Jean, at a guess—starts talking about something he read in
Le Monde
concerning the push for Australia to become a Republic. ‘Why is Australia still tied to England?’ he asks me, puzzled. As a staunch Republican, privately I am delighted for this opportunity to discuss the issue, to shed some light on it for a foreign audience. Taking a deep breath, I summon up my most eloquent French.

‘Many want. Some they don’t want. The old, for example. But I want.’

There is a buzz of rapid conversation as Frédéric scrambles to elaborate: ‘It’s just a matter of time … Sarah thinks most young Australians …’

‘But why are you still loyal to the Queen?’ pursues my interrogator.

Realising my first answer was hopelessly inadequate, I try to convey some passion.

‘No, not true! The Queen, she okay, but not for Australia. Yesterday okay, but not tomorrow.’ Pathetically, I look to Frédéric who again steps in to decipher my message. Thank god he was listening when we’d discussed all this last summer. The conversation about the state of affairs in my country continues without me. Jean-Marc-Marc-Jean addresses all further questions to Frédéric. Inside, I fizz with frustration at my inability to communicate. I love these sorts of discussions! Or at least I used to. But it was as though in trying to express myself in another language I’d suddenly plunged fifty IQ points.

For the next ten minutes I try to sink inconspicuously into
the sofa. Then another guest addresses me. Frédéric has to translate what they said.

‘He said he’s just finished reading
The Songlines
. He wants to know if you’ve read it.’

In fact I have read Bruce Chatwin’s book. And in my own language I’d be delighted to admit it. But saying yes now will only open another Pandora’s box. I’ll be expected to give an opinion, maybe even asked to comment on the plight of Aborigines, their living conditions or spirituality. I’ll only be doing Aborigines and my country an injustice.

‘
Non,
’ I say to save face.

Sylvie summons us to the table. Everyone hovers, waiting for Benoît to seat us, a process which involves rather a lot of indecision and debate. Only when everyone has been placed do all the guests sit down. The entrée of fish terrine is passed to me first, establishing a pattern that will be followed throughout the dinner. It’s as though my foreigner status makes me the honoured guest. I push the platter towards the fellow next to me and he quickly passes it to the next girl, swivelling it expertly so that the serving spoons point in her direction. It conducts two orbits of the table: one for the women, the second for the men. Some people take their time serving themselves, letting the terrine sit in front of them while they finish a conversation. After what seems to me an interminably long wait, at last everyone is served.

The terrine is airy and delicious and I make the mistake of taking two helpings, unaware that four other courses will follow. A rabbit stew with chunks of potato and carrots is served next. It is bursting with flavour and I love the simple way it is served without any accompaniment. Green salad is a separate course. After, a platter of six cheeses is set in front of me and I stare at it nervously, unsure of the correct way to
cut the different shapes. Dessert is a rich, layered chocolate cake which looks so perfect it must have come from a fancy shop. By the end of the meal, my trousers are slicing into my waist.

Throughout dinner, Frédéric tries to include me in the conversation, seizing any opening for me to contribute to the discussion: ‘Oh your brother works in TV?’ he says to his neighbour at one point. ‘Sarah used to work in television too.’ I am touched and amazed that after my earlier efforts he would encourage me to open my mouth again. But the conversation is mostly too rapid for me to follow, let alone worry about contributing to it. I only catch odd words and phrases. Something about a very ‘poetic’ book by Marie someone. A joke about De Gaulle which makes everyone laugh, so I do too. Now they’re talking about virility and femininity and I’m frustrated not to understand more because this sounds interesting. It’s only when they start examining the bottles of Burgundy on the table that it clicks—they’re talking about the wine.

The conversation is, frankly, a bit intimidating. Although animated, this dinner is nothing like the garrulous mealtimes with Jean-Michel and his family in Auvergne—it’s nothing like any dinner I’ve ever been to, actually. It seems so
practised,
as though the guests and hosts have spent centuries refining their respective roles, their manners and interjections. They all seem so articulate, so knowledgeable. Apparently it’s okay to interrupt because everyone does. If only I could think of something worth saying. What illuminating pronouncements could I add to the wine discussion, for example?
C’est bon. Je l’aime
.

Just after midnight we move from the table to the comfortable chairs in the salon. Sylvie goes into the kitchen to
prepare coffees and herbal teas and I wonder why Benoît doesn’t do it—he’s done nothing all night except seat us and pour the wine. All this smiling and concentrating and feigning avid interest in conversations I can’t follow has been exhausting and I’m keen to go. Although surrounded by noise and people I feel apart. Alien.