Au Revoir (6 page)

Curiously I always craved my father's love and approval, despite the fact that as I grew older my love and respect for him greatly diminished. I tried to maintain contact, even after he abandoned my mother, and also tried to patch things up between them. Only once did I lose my cool: he returned for a week, bringing his clothes and other possessions, but sneaked back to his mistress again in the dead of night. It prolonged my mother's agony dreadfully. I went to the wardrobe where his immaculate and expensive clothes were folded in neat piles or hanging on quality wooden hangers, and chopped them into small pieces with my mother's sharp dressmaking scissors. Three or four suits, several tweed jackets, shirts, underwear and socks all felt my wrath. Neither he nor my mother ever said anything about it, it was as if it hadn't happened. Not long afterwards, my father committed suicide in the small, sordid flat that he had been sharing with the ‘other' woman. I didn't cry at his funeral, and after the initial shock of his sudden departure abated, I barely gave him a passing thought.

T
REKKING IN THE VEGETATION-RICH
valleys of the Himalayas is one of the few perks of my television work with the ABC. Travel companies frequently approach television ‘faces' to lead holiday tours overseas, and when I was asked by an adventure travel company several years back to take groups of Australian trekkers to look at alpine plants in northern India, I eagerly jumped at the idea, and afterwards realised it was something in my life that I found totally inspirational. After my first trek I felt an exhilaration I had never experienced before: I had accomplished a difficult climb to enter a rare and exotic corner of the world seen by only a few adventurous individuals. Every year I am determined to repeat the sensation by leading new groups of plant lovers into the wild mountains.

This year, however, my eagerness is tempered by something else: I am itching to get to France. I arrive in Delhi late on a Friday night, to a stifling heat. Even at night the city never sleeps—teeming people, and traffic in all directions, shrill horns honking, roadside vendors peddling spicy snacks, makeshift cardboard and
plastic dwellings flapping in the humid breeze. The next morning we catch the 6.15 train to Dehra Dun, in the foothills of the vast mountain ranges.

The train is packed and the journey itself is a bit of an adventure, with attendants rattling down the crowded corridors handing out hot tea, soft spicy omelettes and packets of sweets and biscuits. We reach Dehra Dun in the afternoon and take a bus for the long drive up winding mountain roads to the hill station of Mussoorie, which will be our first overnight stop. As we climb we can clearly see the filthy haze that lies over the plains stretching south, a combination of heat and pollution, and a normal feature of this part of the world where the intense summer heat of the flat country hits the cool mountain air. The views are breathtaking and the driving standard is hair-raising but I think that if you don't ever take a few risks in your life, you might as well stay home and watch the midday movie. And at the end of it will be this spectacular valley filled with brilliant flowers.

From Mussoorie, a British Raj town founded as a cool summer escape, we travel again by bus to Sankri, where the trekking finally begins. The climb itself takes four days, deep into the Harki Dun valley. The uphill stretches are really hard work, but the winding paths, through woodlands and past primitive villages, are enchanting beyond belief, and the views from every aspect are truly mind boggling: soaring snow-capped mountains, deep valleys, cascades and waterfalls of icy water. As we tramp through forests of silver-trunked birches, stately cedars and fragrant pines, we seek out the unique flora we've primarily come for: wild Himalayan musk roses (
Rosa brunonii
); clumps of rare perennials including arisaemas with their metre-long, stick spadixes and majestic chequered fritillarias; carpets of blue and
white anemones and dwarf iris; clumps of brilliant yellow marsh marigolds gathering beside every stream.

For me, this trek is a totally cleansing and purifying experience. To be without western food, including alcohol, for nearly two weeks somehow brings new life to my aging body. To be so far removed from any possibility of a telephone or a fax or an email is a calming feeling. To wake in the middle of the night and realise that you are completely separated from your ‘real' world brings an exhilarating sense of freedom. Although slightly detached from reality, you are somehow more in touch with reality than ever before. It's a powerful sensation. I, for one, feel elated when we finally walk out of the last forest glen and into the quaint village of Taluka where hot tea is served in a smoky tearoom. My elation, I know, is partly due to the knowledge I'll soon be embarking on the next real adventure of this whole trip.

Back in Delhi, I prepare for France by jettisoning my trekking gear including day pack, heavy boots and thermal gear. I meet up with a fellow tour guide from the same company and he offers to take my gear back to Australia the following day. Alleviated of the trappings of my mountain adventure, I feel light and start to prepare myself mentally for my final escape from responsibility.

Before leaving India I do some last-minute shopping in the street bazaars and covered markets. Some presents for the children and grandchildren, and some gorgeous fabric which I intend using to make a patchwork quilt during my long evenings alone in France. The idea I have is to combine colours and designs from exotic India with peasant-style French fabrics into a bed cover that will, in many years to come, remind me of this lonely but unique journey I am taking. I select reds, oranges,
yellows and blacks that I know will blend with the colours of rural France. With them safely tucked into my luggage, I head for the airport.

After the enormous effort of acquiring a long stay French visa, I am mortified at Paris when the airport immigration officials don't even bother to examine my passport. They merely wave me through the barrier with blank expressions. Why was I required to furnish such a complex array of legal documents vouching for my character and financial status when they are irrelevant to getting into the country? Theoretically I realise I can stay as long as I like: my passport hasn't even been stamped and therefore nobody will know on what date I arrived.

From Paris I take the domestic flight to Nice. Despite my pique over the visa, I immediately note with appreciation small cultural differences, like the casual acceptance of lap dogs at the airport. All around me perky heads are poking out from leather shoulder bags, bright eyes surveying the busy scene. Dogs are actually allowed to travel in the cabin with their owners, and in the window seat of the aisle opposite me a squash-faced Pekingese is sitting on his owner's lap watching the planes take off and land with intense interest. I wonder if the dog were a Labrador would it be allowed? Or a cat, for that matter.

On the plane I try listening hard and tuning my brain into conversations to get my ear working, but I realise I am not even picking up on the odd word. It's four years since I was last in France and obviously my grasp of the language is even more vague than I had hoped. This time I will make a concerted effort
to speak and to listen and not just to use one or two words and lots of frantic hand actions to convey my meaning. Perhaps after six months I will be capable of a halting French conversation.

At Nice I am met by Fabienne, the wife of our old friend Richard Barnes. It's blazing hot and she takes me back to their cool and pretty apartment in Saint-Laurent-du-Var for icy drinks and a bowl of pasta. Fabienne is rare among French women in that she loathes cooking. Well, I think that she is rare, but she assures me that she's typical of her generation. She's incredibly slim too, so I imagine she doesn't enjoy eating much either—something soon confirmed when she picks at her food rather than eating with enthusiasm, unlike me. For many French women staying slim is a priority, in order to be able to wear the sort of clothes that convey a youthful image.

I have known Richard Barnes since he was twelve; he is the son of our dear old actor friend, Deryck Barnes, who lived at Sunny Corner near Bathurst. I didn't see much of Richard in his late teens, when he dropped out of university to the horror of his parents and went into commercial radio. In his early twenties, while on a working holiday in Europe with mates, he landed a job as an announcer on the English-speaking Radio Riviera in Monaco. He has been living in France ever since. Richard and Fabienne have two gorgeous daughters named in honour of the ships of Jacques Cousteau, Calypso and Océane.

Richard is generously lending me his old car for six months, which will be much cheaper and hopefully more reliable than buying an unknown car and selling it at the end of my trip. The car is a Peugeot 205 with a sunroof, considered by the French to be a bit of a classic, and very racy when I finally get to drive it. It has been garaged for eight months with a gear problem and the
deal is that I pay for repairs, registration and insurance and it's mine until December. Unfortunately Richard has been very busy recently and he explains the car isn't quite ready. In fact it's far from ready with a smashed sunroof, defective tyres, and a faulty exhaust and muffler that make it sound like a rock-crushing machine. There's also paperwork to be done, and it looks as though I'll need to stay in Nice for at least the rest of the week until it's all in order.

I spend a few days exploring the waterfront villages around Nice, and also pay a courtesy visit to the elderly mother of a French friend who lives in Sydney. A widow close to eighty, Madame D'Erceville has no English and I have no French, yet she kindly invites me to lunch in her small apartment in Golfe Juan. I take the morning train with no problem, and when I arrive she greets me warmly. I have visited her on previous trips to France, but always in the company of a translator, so this will be a good test of my abilities to communicate. Mme D'Erceville has had several hip replacement operations and walks with some difficulty, but has managed to prepare a five-course meal which we eat accompanied by local wine. It's not long before my small repertoire of French phrases is exhausted and we lapse into a convivial silence. Over coffee she suggests I might like to see some television and I agree. She flicks on the set and quickly nods off to sleep while I sit and try to make some sense of the program, a foreign soapy badly dubbed into French. When she wakes I have another coffee and take my leave, determined to rectify my appalling lack of language.

While waiting for the car to be fixed I explore the shops for patchwork fabrics to blend in with the colourful selection I made in India. The cottons are beautiful, although quite expensive,
and I buy some bright Provençal designs and some softer colours with the idea of making another small cot quilt for the grandchild who will be born while I am living in France. I am convinced that having a few sewing projects will help fill up the hours when I am alone, and prevent me from feeling too homesick.

By Friday the car is finally ready and I pack my gear and load up the boot. Richard offers to take me for a test drive and with great confidence I leap into the driver's seat and take off at speed. Of course the steering wheel, gears, controls and pedals are all on the opposite side of the car. I find it very difficult changing gears with my right hand, also to judge the distance from the centre line of the narrow streets that characterise most towns in France. My problem is not keeping to the right, but keeping too far over to the right so that the side mirror keeps banging into parked cars and traffic barriers. Richard screams in alarm when I nearly drive us into a ditch, he screams again when I narrowly miss sideswiping a van, and he shrieks in terror when I actually snap off the mirror on his side by hitting a barrier. I park outside his apartment and go in for coffee, my knees still knocking together in fright. Richard, though white as a sheet, cheerfully reassures me that all will be fine when I hit the open road. I am filled with dread when we finally set off in convoy—he will lead me to the nearest entrance to the motorway, called the péage, then I am truly on my own for the first time.