Read 2006 - A Piano in The Pyrenees Online
Authors: Tony Hawks,Prefers to remain anonymous
From the kitchen an English voice interrupted us. It sounded familiar. I looked up and, dog-like, cocked my head.
“Who’s that?” I asked.
“That’s Steve.”
“Steve?”
“It’s BBC radio. It’s Steve Wright in the afternoon.”
“Wow—you can get that here?”
“The miracle of the internet,” said Paul.
“I love my English radio and TV,” said Berry. “It keeps me in touch with things. I couldn’t live without
Casualty
on a Saturday night. I’m hooked.”
Berry, it seemed, had developed a different approach to living in France. She openly admitted that she missed being close to her family and that the constant effort required with the language was fatiguing. The sound of an English DJ, or time spent with a British soap opera, were things that she’d struggle to do without. For her, technology meant that the country of her roots wasn’t so far away and she was happy to live in a kind of cultural hybrid.
“Well, thanks for your time,” I said as I stood up to go.
“I’m sure we weren’t much help,” said Paul.
“You were. If nothing else, you’ve confirmed for me that I have to get a pool.”
“Bring your trunks next time and have a swim,” said Berry.
“I will, thanks.”
The way it was looking, I’d be doing exacdy that for years to come.
§
The following day Brad continued with DIY chores around the house and I set off bright and early to purchase an ever-growing list of tools from the
quincaillerie
. I didn’t know it yet but this hardware store was going to become one of my favourite shops in Bagneres. It didn’t look much from the road, but once inside I was amazed to discover that the shop stretched out into little anterooms, each of which harboured a different specialist area of bolts, nuts or electrical paraphernalia. The man who ran the place was in his late sixties, and he had an assistant who was younger than him, but only just. I watched them serve the two customers before me and I was quickly convinced that the two of them knew everything about their stock, right the way down to the last nut and bolt.
It occurred to me that these are the kinds of shops that have all but disappeared in England with the onset of the big chains and their knockdown prices. Somehow in France these family-run stores are still able to survive alongside the capitalist giants. For how long, I wonder? I guess they’ll only be there for as long as there’s a generation who feel like they belong in the shop—and who don’t have aspirations for big profits. These retailers tick over—that’s all. They’re never going to have a big money-spinning year that will enable them to sell up and go and live on a yacht in Monte Carlo. Not that the two men in the shop would have necessarily fitted in particularly well to that environment anyway. That world was of no interest. I bet that all they’d ever wanted to do was work in this
quincaillerie
and do it well, whilst raising a family along the way. This was their lot, and from the expression on their faces, it seemed to be a happy one.
As I headed home, pleased with my new purchases, I was in relaxed mood. I drove slowly. It’s something I’ve always done. Passengers often look at me like there’s something wrong with me, or make an irritated remark.
“Put your foot down, Grandad, for Christ’s sake.”
I usually oblige, just for an easy life, but it’s not something that comes naturally. I prefer to take it nice’n’easy. I’m not sure why, as I’m not someone who lives my life without taking risks. Perhaps it’s just that I can’t see the point of hurrying everywhere. One of the great ironies of modern life is that people rush like crazy to get to places where quite often, in their heart of hearts, they don’t really want to be. Not me though—I happily flirt with the lower end of the speed limit, however unfashionable it may be.
It wouldn’t have been a problem in these parts had I been able to enjoy empty roads on which to dawdle with impunity. Unfortunately I had to share them with others, and they happened to be French Pyrenean drivers. What distinguishes this particular group from many others is their total disregard for braking distance. It is simply a concept they cannot grasp. Why allow a little space between you and the car in front, enabling you to relax and enjoy the drive? Far better to spend the entire journey in a constant state of anxiety by hugging the rear end of the car in front, even if all you’re doing is nipping down to the supermarket for a pint of milk.
Just as I was driving through the local town at a sensible speed, a young couple stepped onto a pedestrian crossing in front of me, pushing a baby in a pram. I probably could have kept going, swerving where necessary, but I wasn’t entirely sure whether the couple were expecting me to stop, and I had no idea whether they would continue to walk into my line of fire without looking. A split second of indecision followed before I resolved that stopping would be a better option than killing a young family. I quickly applied the brakes and drew the car to a halt at the crossing. However, a quick glance in the mirror immediately revealed that the vehicle behind me had been taken somewhat by surprise by my act of mercy. A bloody great big van was careering towards me, brakes screeching and driver making an excellent fist of looking horrified.
Fortunately the van had good brakes.
Unfortunately this didn’t mean that collision was avoided. The van did hit me. Just not as hard as it might have done, that’s all.
Thud!↓
≡ Bang! or Crash! would do here too. You decide which best conjures up the noise of a large van colliding with a small Ford Ka.
My head was jolted backwards, but the seat’s headrest did its job and whiplash was avoided. For a second I just sat there—emotionless, stunned. A beat later and I was able to feel relief. Relief that I hadn’t been injured. This was closely followed by disappointment. All things considered, having a hefty vehicle smash into your rear end isn’t the ideal finale to any shopping trip.
Meanwhile, the couple with the pram crossed in front of me, as calm as you like. They looked across to me and managed a nod of thanks. Was that it? Was a cursory and almost desultory nod all I was going to get? I’d just saved their lives for God’s sake—had they not realised this? And I’d sacrificed the rear end of my car in the process.
Not having a face to pull that could successfully express these feelings of outrage, I nodded back and the couple moved off, continuing their day seemingly unmoved by the recent collision of van and hatchback. No such luck for me, however. I got out of the car only to find myself confronted by an angry man. He was tall and wiry, and even though he wasn’t wearing a beret, he was quintessentially French. I guess he was around forty years old, with a ruddy complexion, pointed nose and features that somehow suggested a penchant for intransigency. He waved his arms and berated me for having stopped. I timidly pointed out that I hadn’t wanted to kill three people. This seemed a reasonable enough point of view, but my position had been immeasurably weakened by the fact that I was undoubtedly not French. Worse still, I was English.
Experience had shown me that the whole ‘French not getting on with the English’ business is nothing but a fallacy promoted by our modern tabloid culture, but every now and again there was a moment when one could almost begin to subscribe to it, and such a moment was upon me.
I persisted with my defence, doing my utmost to form the best French sentences at my disposal, perceiving that errors in grammar would do more to harm my argument than any flaws in logic. Slowly, and with each correctly delivered turn of phrase, my Gallic foe calmed down. I pointed out that no one had caused the accident deliberately and that we could discuss rather than accuse, and soon we started to become chatty, almost to the point of being a bit ‘pally’.
The best news of all was that close inspection revealed that there had been no noticeable damage to either vehicle. Miraculously my hire car, sturdy customer that it was, had withstood the impact without a scratch, and I was saved from an administrative nightmare involving insurance and car hire companies. This happy discovery enabled the two of us to shake hands warmly and say goodbye, only one notch short of arranging to meet for a drink later in the week. We had proved that European brethren can get on, even after one of them has driven into the back of the other.
I noticed as he drove off, however, that his vehicle was no ordinary van. No. Of course, it was a white van. What was it with me and white vans?
I hoped that I was living a good enough life to make it to heaven, because I reckoned I knew what my welcome at hell would be like.
“Ah, Hawks, there you are. We’ve arranged to have the soles of your feet beaten before you go to spend the night with the ravenous jackals. It’s just a short journey of five hundred miles. Ah—here’s the dodgy vehicle that will take you there now. It’s a white van. Have a good trip…”
§
“There are a lot of lorries parked in the square, aren’t there?” said Brad.
“Yes. I wonder why.”
Brad and I were driving through Bagneres on the way to the mountains where we were planning to take a nice walk. It had been my suggestion. It was a beautiful day so why not take a break from all this furniture assembly, fitting of lights and putting up of shelves? We were flying back to Britain the following day and we needed to be sure that we got ourselves a dose of some healing fresh air.
“It looks like there’s been some sort of bike race going on,” said Brad.
The clue had been the scores of men in multi-coloured Lycra and the hundreds of state-of-the-art bikes strapped to vans and jeeps. A logo on one of the vans revealed the identity of the race.
“It’s only the Tour de France!” I said.
It was a measure of just how cut off we’d allowed ourselves to become that the most watched sporting event in the world could pass by under our very noses without us knowing anything about it.
“It’s a shame we missed that,” said Brad. “I’d love to have seen the tour come through. Just a bit of it.”
“That’s all you would have seen,” I said. “A bit of it.”
I’d cast my eye over this race the previous year after having been persuaded by a friend to travel over to northern France for the day to watch it from a roadside. This experience had shown me that there may be many stages to the Tour, but for the spectator there are only seven.
The Tour de France, rather pleasingly, was becoming France’s Wimbledon—that is, a world-famous sporting event that nobody from the host country seems to win. It has been a generation since a Frenchman has triumphed in the tour and, worse still, in recent years it’s been dominated by an American. Salt in the wound.
We drove on through Bagneres and left behind the ant-like hustle and bustle of the tour’s enormous entourage of back-up teams, promotions people, television crews and journalists. We were heading for more peaceful climes. I dropped the car down into second gear as we began to climb towards the thinner air of the mountains.
This was to be my first proper mountain walk here, presumably the first of many. Up until this moment walking had never been a pursuit that had appealed that much. It wasn’t exciting enough and it had no competitive element. Yes, walking is an event in the Olympics but everyone knows full well that it’s the worst event in the games by some margin. I mean, that kind of walking isn’t really walking anyway. It’s nearly running. And what is the point of nearly running? If someone is chasing after you with a red-hot poker intent on inserting it where the sun don’t shine then you don’t nearly run away from them. I’m sorry, but you run as fast as you can. That’s why running as fast as you can is such a tiptop event. Unlike the walking. I believe that in the Olympics the walkers (for want of changing one letter in their name) should have to enter another event as well—called Nearly Swimming.
No, for me, walking had always been an activity for middle-aged people. Maybe that was why I was looking forward to it so much.
Casual walkers (I can’t speak for the competitive ones) are extremely friendly. As Brad and I set out on the ninety-minute walk across the side of a Pyrenean foothill towards a pretty lake, each person we passed offered up a jovial ‘
bonjour
. Every single person, without fail. It was almost as if the moment they’d left the speed, noise and fluster of the town behind and exchanged it for the freedom of the countryside, their manners had changed.
“
Bonjour!
”
“
Bonjour!
”
“
Bonjour!
”
“
Bonjour!
”
We all said.
Initially Brad and I found this all rather charming and we happily returned each salutation at volume, and with relish. However, as the walk progressed and we were called upon to expend a lot of energy on a long steady climb, we began to resent every
bonjour
, seeing each one as a waste of valuable oxygen. I started to mumble my
bonjours
, and then, as I became even more out of breath, I noticed that Brad had come up with a good technique. He simply put his head down and avoided all eye contact with passing walkers. If a
bonjour
was still forthcoming from the opposing hiker then he did little more than mumble or grunt. A clever technique, and one I immediately adopted.
The problem was that, although these people were saying
bonjour
, they didn’t really want to stop, chat or pass on any meaningful information. I was reminded of a coastal walk I’d taken once in California where everyone I’d passed had said, “Hi, how ya doin’?” I wouldn’t have minded if they’d paused for a moment to find out how I was actually doing, but no, not the slightest reduction in the speed of their gait, not even a turn of the head to see what my reply might have been.