Leontyne (9 page)

We were soon on our way again but I have a dreadful antipathy to Wednesday: nothing ever seems to go right for me on a Wednesday and this Wednesday was no exception. We had not gone more than a few kilometres down the canal when Ray suddenly found himself unable to stop the boat
because the gear-cable control lever had snapped off. I saw him leap into the engine room and switch off the engine while I rushed to the wheel and steered the boats towards a muddy bank. We came to a rather abrupt stop, and cutlery and cups cascaded to the floor, but luckily not too much was smashed.

We managed to fix up a temporary repair, which meant having the tug floorboards up all the time; this was a real hazard and caused banged shins and stubbed toes every time I went by. We made our way to the nearest phone box and I phoned the crane-driver who said he could arrange for us to pick up a replacement cable at the next barge junction town, which in this case was to be Rheims. I felt very pleased that we had been taken for professionals and that this service of picking up spare parts from the next convenient stop had been extended to us. It required a good deal of trust on the part of the trader, but we were not going to get too far away on the canals and in any case every lock-keeper who saw us would certainly remember this ramshackle craft as it puttered through his lock.

Our next big hurdle was the flight of automatic locks at Rethel. That day we passed thirty-four locks, something of a record. A party of schoolchildren came on board for a couple of them, while their teacher explained how the automatic locks worked. As the barge entered the lock, a lever sticking out from its side was pushed back by the side of the boat, and that triggered the system for shutting the gates behind us. When one is in a smaller boat it is necessary to operate this lever by hand, otherwise the gates will not close. Once inside the lock, there are two bars, one red and one blue. The red one is for emergency; when the blue one is lifted it lets the water out of the lock (or lets it in if you are going up). Once the lock is empty, the doors open and as the boat leaves the lock another lever is pushed by the side of the vessel, and the gates, after a suitable interval, close. The children were extremely well behaved and interested and I
am sure that they had a really exceptional teacher. They all left at the next lock and walked up the hill to their bikes – presumably on their way back to school.

Ray decided that he had seen too many fish jumping in the water to let them get away with it much longer, so we went into a fishing shop at the next town. Every town in France remotely near water has a fishing-tackle shop, as fishing is without any question the most popular sport in France. Why the French sit for hours watching floats in muddy water, to try to catch fish which are at best less than tasty, is very hard to understand, but I suppose it must have enormous fascination. The first really warm days of summer were upon us and the fishing enthusiasts were already perched on the banks and getting their invective ready for the innocent British barge that would pass by and destroy the moment when that monster of the deep was about to swallow their bait. I translated for Ray as he purchased what the man in the shop told us was the bait of the season: red worms, which he produced live from his fridge. We would have no problems, he said. I was sure that the fish would have no problems either.

I recalled an occasion when my son Jason had been taken with the fishing bug on the Canal du Centre many years before, and had bought a box of white maggots in similar circumstances. He had left them open on the hatch above the pillow on my bunk. During the night a gust of wind had blown the plastic pot over so that all the maggots had fallen on to my head. When I awoke in the morning, I thought for one dreadful moment that I was dead and in my grave as I felt those disgusting creatures creeping over my skin.

I put up part of the canopy to get a spot of shade, as the steel deck was beginning to get very hot during the afternoons. We stopped early that evening because Ray wanted to try his hand at fishing. Neither of us were sure what the local rules about fishing were, so we chose a spot where we would be unseen except by some sheep. We might
just as well not have concerned ourselves about the niceties of permissions, for Ray sat for hours watching his lifeless float until he was forced inside by an enormous cloudburst after a dramatic electrical storm. I made sure the red worms were safely sealed on deck!

The other traffic on the canal was very slight. We had passed two laden barges under way with fertilizer and a British yacht called
Contented Lady
. The woman in question stood on the minuscule deck sipping a gin and tonic while her husband steered, contentment oozing from every pore as she peered down her nose at us – clearly not members of the white-plimsoll yachting fraternity. There is nothing so frigid as the British greeting each other in places where they think that only they, or their class of people, should be.

Berry-au-Bac is another waterway junction that everyone on the water knows. We arrived there in the evening in the pouring rain with nothing left in the larder. I made an impassioned plea for something to eat and the
éclusière
came up trumps with a live chicken and some champagne of excellent quality for a mere fifty-two francs a bottle. I suppose it must have fallen off the back of a barge somewhere. I took the chicken back to the barge, holding it by the string that the woman had tied round its ankles, wondering if I could remember how to cope with the execution and plucking. To my surprise and relief, Ray announced that when he had started his working life he had been a butcher's boy and the situation held no fears for him at all. And so it was that we had roast chicken and champagne that rainy evening in Berry-au-Bac. Tomorrow we would be in the heart of champagne-country in Rheims.

It rained all night and all the next day as we steamed on to Rheims. I could never have guessed, as we moored in the centre, that this great city was to throw up the surprise that it did. I wanted to see the room where the Germans and the Allies had signed the Armistice at the end of the Second World War. When I got there I found the Armistice Room
full of men and women in battle fatigues. For a moment I took no notice, but then I wondered what on earth these people were doing there, and I asked them what they were up to. I was told that they were a group of military vehicle enthusiasts who collected Second World War vehicles for a hobby, and that they had come to this part of the country to attend a huge rally of like-minded loonies at Mourmelon the next day. They invited me to come along to see their pride and joy, an American ambulance, apparently authentic in every way. One of their party had gone to the trouble of buying an equally authentic pack of Lucky Strike, and had stuck it in the netting over his US GI-type tin helmet.

Mourmelon is a huge area reserved for military manoeuvres by the French army, with a small garrison-town in the midst of it. The public had been allowed in for this vast meeting of military freaks. It was an excuse for dressing up, which I suppose is something the French take to, but on a scale and with a seriousness I had never seen before. I spoke to a giant of a man dressed as a Scottish soldier, from a regiment, he explained, that had been raised from Scottish settlers in Charleston on the Ohio River to fight the Yankees. There were groups of French pretending to be GIs and singing American marching songs with a French accent. There were men dressed up as the French army in the trenches at Verdun. All types of settlers from the Midwest of America mingled with Zouaves and other glamorous sections of the historical French armies. In the midst of this strange gathering were the French national servicemen who had been drafted to shepherd these garish crowds into the right sections of the encampment. I asked one of them whether, when his time was up, he would dress up and come to one of these rallies. ‘Certainly not,' he replied, ‘I'm no Fascist.'

In a far corner of this foreign field was a small encampment of people dressed up as Royal Army Service Corps soldiers. Their leader, a young Englishman dressed as a Lieutenant, told me he was the barman at the British Legion in Paris, and
explained that they had chosen the RASC because it was the only unit for which they could get all the insignia. He was enormously proud of his efforts, which were indeed splendid, and had gathered round him a group of Frenchmen who were delightedly digging trenches and playing with Vickers machine guns. I suppose that this kind of activity was the highlight of their season but it all seemed to me to represent a great deal of misspent energy. I mentioned to him that I had just seen a Frenchman dressed as a British Field Marshal wearing the Victoria Cross, and asked him what the form was about this sort of medal abuse. He told me that he would kill anyone insulting such orders. Put to the test minutes later, he only managed to persuade the Field Marshal, who insolently never removed a drooping Gauloise from his lips while speaking, to cover up the offending ribbon. I felt really quite sorry for him in the midst of this stupid charade, as he explained to the Frenchman that his father had fought to get some of the other medals on his chest. The Frenchman's attitude was that he had such a high regard for the British Army that he felt quite justified in wearing these medal ribbons. I think if the truth were known he probably thought the colours of the ribbons suited his sallow complexion.

Rheims is the commercial heart of the Champagne district. The low rolling hills with their chalky soil make it ideal for growing just the right grape for the wine that is used in Dom Perignon's famous invention, and, perhaps most importantly, the ground is ideal for tunnelling enormous caves to store the precious liquid for the required period. Everywhere tourist trips are advertised for visits to the establishments of the famous champagne houses, so, ever curious, I went along to try to find the answer to something that had always puzzled me. Everyone knows that champagne comes from this district alone and the growers from this part of the world spend fortunes on defending the name so that other manufacturers in other parts of the world are not able to sell their products calling it champagne. Since the number of hectares available for cultivation is finite, how was it that every year another few million bottles of champagne are produced?

I decided on a company with a German name and had the regular tour with a charming lady whose deliciously accented English somehow added to the mystery, as she spoke of the ‘distinguished bubbles' her company produced. We tramped through the vast underground labyrinths these places possess. I had the feeling of being in a James Bond film, as small electrical tractors rushed around with grim-looking drivers, unaware of the world, their heads swathed under enormous ear-protectors. The process that Dom Perignon invented has been scientifically refined for better, faster production but the principles remain the same. Rival houses have even
contested the claim that the Dom actually invented champagne and claim it was a process that was already well advanced when he made it famous. This he did by using doses of it to cure the remorse, during confession, of a certain loose-living countess. She subsequently introduced it to the Court of Louis XIV, and so made both the wine and the Dom famous.

It became clear on our tour that, however the wine was made, the greatest factor in its rise to stardom was the enormous amount of energy that went into the business of selling it to the public. The company I went to had kept all their nineteenth-century posters and advertisements which were fascinating. A particularly striking poster of a girl in a bright yellow skirt, sitting astride a bottle of bubbly which was propelling her like a rocket into the twentieth century, caught my eye. Though I could not get anyone to admit it, the wine from the famous Champagne district is blended every year with more and more wine from outside the district. I am sure that any knowledgeable wine merchant would be able to advise on what blends were closest to the contents of the bottle the girl in the yellow skirt was so sinuously clasping between her thighs. The popping of champagne corks must surely rank as one of the most deliciously anticipatory sounds in history, so very much more glamorous than the unpeeling of Velcro which has been described as the sexiest sound of the eighties.

Because of the vast public relations efforts that have been going on for so long in this part of France, it is very difficult to establish which stories are true and which are the product of some clever copywriter's imagination. I particularly liked the story that the Germans would not advance through the district during the First World War, because they had heard rumours that great numbers of French troops were hidden in the champagne cellars under the no-man's-land between the lines. The idea was that if the Germans advanced, the French would pop up as soon as they had moved forward
and attack them from the rear – encouraged, no doubt, by what they had found down below.

I took a moment in the magnificent cathedral in Rheims to gaze at the superb stained glass and remember my friend Nino Rota, whose death I had heard of when I was in this city many years before. If you are very lucky in life, you may meet a genius, and Nino was the one I met. He was, of course, famous for writing practically all the music for the films of Federico Fellini and virtually creating the sound of Italy on film for many millions of people north and west of the Alps. I had met him in Rome some twenty years back while we were making
Romeo and Juliet
with Franco Zeffirelli, when he had written the famous theme for that film which now haunts me as it has become muzak in most of the lifts and airports of the world. Nino, like most Italians, was a great traveller and had visited almost every part of the world. He bought postcards wherever he went which he never posted, except through the slot in the top of the trunk that he kept in the hall of his house for that purpose. I have often wondered what happened to that trunk which must contain the most extraordinary collection of cards. His great ambition was to have an oratorio which he composed for ten thousand voices sung in the hills round Rimini – a dream which, I am happy to say, he achieved shortly before his death. To have the ability to hear music when looking at the notes on a page is something that fills me with great admiration, but to be able to compose a hit tune for one famous Italian film and then have equal success with the same tune written in reverse in another successful film, as Nino did, is quite beyond my comprehension.