Authors: Maeve Binchy
They try too not to be too accurate. This came up over the recent football match. There is no adjective ‘Argentinian’. In fact, the word you should use is ‘Argentine’ to describe the team. But the pronunciation unit did not recommend this as it sounded a little too hair-splitting and liable to be misunderstood by the majority of the audience. If I thought that the BBC pronunciation unit was rather over-documented, said Hazel Wright, I should have a look at the way the French go about it. Almost every day she receives their documentation and it is incredibly detailed and indeed much more dictatorial. It is also extraordinarily charming since every manifesto about the wrong pronunciation of consonants before vowels ends with a little quote from the famous. I examined a few. ‘I’ve been speaking prose for forty years and didn’t know it’ Molière. Or: ‘A knowledge of words is a knowledge of things’ Plato. The French do things with style, thinks Mrs Wright. Who wouldn’t like to do things with more style if there were more of them, and more time? She doesn’t want to order people what to say but to be able to give exhaustive reasons for any particular pronunciation she suggests. Her rooms are surrounded with reference books as well as files. The phone hardly stopped ringing with people wanting to know how to pronounce things.
‘Life would be very simple for us if we didn’t have news,’ she says. ‘You see we could get the correct pronunciation of any word correctly in a day or two, but somehow that isn’t the way a radio and television service works. It has to know at once or not at all.’
I
t arrived the other day. A nice postcard of Paris. On the back was this message: ‘Everything arranged this end. Have finished the book finally. Paris as lovely as it always was. Hope everything fine with you now. Love John.’
This is the greatest mystery that has ever occurred in my life. What has he arranged at his end, for God’s sake? Is it a hotel room, a bank robbery, an interview with the President? Who is he? I checked the Johns I know. The ones in
The Irish Times
are still working away at their desks and are arranging nothing in Paris.
I know a travel agent called John, who told me gloomily that he couldn’t afford to go to Paris to arrange anything. I rang a John who works in the hotel business and had a ridiculous shouted conversation with him about bed nights and tourist receipts, but he hasn’t been to Paris for five years and doesn’t think he’ll ever see it again. Then what could the book be, is it one he has written or just one he has read? I suppose I can watch the book lists for a year or two in case John Somebody published something, but suppose he was just wading through
War and Peace
? I’m delighted Paris is as lovely as it always was, but is there an implication that we once saw it together? I was never in that city with anyone called John, never. There were no moonlight walks by the Seine holding the hand of a John. He must mean that it was as lovely as he separately and I separately had always found it. Why shouldn’t everything be fine with me? Now or any other time. What wasn’t fine? It’s terrible to try and think of the things that haven’t been fine, you just become very neurotic. Could he be somebody I met when I fell down all those stairs and had to be taken breathing oxygen to a hospital? That was the last time that things weren’t fine. Or was he around when I lost my diary with every address, phone number and piece of information I will need for the rest of my life?
Oh to hell with him; anyone who has the arrogance to sign himself John and expect to be recognised doesn’t deserve a moment’s thought. But why can’t I sleep worrying about what he has arranged at his end. And what damn book has he finished? And why did he spell my name right if I don’t know him, and why couldn’t he have sent a postcard to somebody else?
I
f you go to the Club Méditerranée on your own, you have to share a hut or a bungalow with someone else. One time, when I was in Turkey, I shared with a girl called Francine. She was very, very beautiful; she examined all my clothes with a lack of interest, went through the three pieces of make-up I had with disappointment, asked me rather humiliatingly did Irish women not care about being chic, and finally, deciding that I would be no threat to her, became my best friend for three weeks.
Francine was an air hostess. She was recovering from a serious operation, the details of which I tried to shut out but it seemed to be bits of stomach being untied from where they were and tied to other bits. She was also recovering from a broken heart, had borrowed £200 from a friend for clothes and was going to have a marvellous time, and return to Paris looking magnificent and possibly with a new remedy for the broken heart in tow.
We had an unspoken arrangement about not meeting during the day. Because Francine would spend the morning on the beach miles away from everyone, sunbathing nude. She would have three green figs for her lunch, which was insanity since the food was included in the price and was magnificent. She would spend the afternoon in the ‘Hammam’ or Turkish bath and emerge after about three hours looking lovely.
Dinner time was when she would cast around for men to hunt. For the first week there was little interesting to catch. She would discuss the conquests flatly when we went to bed. ‘No, the Italian lawyer was very boring. I wish I could have found him suitable, because he is from a very wealthy family, but no.’ And a most handsome lounge lizardish sort of person who paid her constant attention was dismissed petulantly. ‘You see, he is a great nuisance. Other men do not come and talk to me while he is there, and he is a very stupid and very vain little man.’
I left her to go off and do a strenuous six-day excursion in the valley of Goreme. It meant crawling through rock-hewn churches, climbing what looked like the face of the Eiger. Filthy and out of breath, I would return to our central Turkish base each evening for a quick wash and a night of cheap wine, wondering vaguely how Francine was making out with the checklist of possibles she had drawn up. There seemed nobody likely for me to bring back to her on the outing. They were all filthy as I was, and seemed to have no interest in anything except rock-hewn churches, which I guessed might not be Francine’s secret passion.
In fact, they were a pretty dull lot, the men on that trip, and the dullest of all was a surgeon with a pipe which made him totally inarticulate in any language. He had a difficult 18-year-old son behaving like a 12-year-old, full of sulks and shoulder shrugging and boredom which drove us all mad. The surgeon said to me once that he couldn’t continue talking with me unless I would learn to pronounce the French word ‘suspendu’ correctly, because it made his teeth water to hear the way I did say it. That kind of thing can either be a challenge or a pain in the face. It was a pain in the face. On our return to the main camp, Francine looked even more beautiful but a bit cheesed off on the quest for the grail. Men there had been in plenty presenting themselves, but they were all of inferior intelligence. Since Francine was not exactly Einstein, this seemed odd but interesting. I wondered hesitantly should she go out and look for friends during the day instead of waiting until dinner time. I had found some playmates of my own out in fishing boats and at barbecues. No, said Francine purposefully, that would not do at all. You would meet a rough sort of person that way. And how could you judge their manners and their style if you didn’t meet them at dinner?
The next night I introduced her to Christian, the sour doctor. I thought it would be a conversation of ten seconds’ duration, and was surprised to see them half an hour later chatting away. That night she sat with him at dinner and was very, very late back to our bungalow. She turned on the lights, handed me a cigarette and, clasping my hand, said, ‘You are a genius; he’s perfect, just perfect.’
To be woken from sleep to such enthusiasm is startling, but the more I thought of the strange doctor and the magnificent-looking romance-seeking Francine, the more I began to think it was one of those dreams where you imagine that your younger brother is married to Catherine the Great and you wonder what to do about it.
It was no dream. The 24-year-old Francine and the 50ish Christian were inseparable for the rest of the holiday. She would wake me every night to tell me the details, which were very, very boring, and mainly involved her strategy in not giving him all he would naturally as a man want, because it was wiser to wait until they were married.
One night, despairing to be woken to the same story, I said that perhaps he might not want all that men might naturally want on account of sharing a bungalow with his 18-year-old son, and she said I had a lot to learn. The son, who was called Claude, became even more painful as time went on, and was sitting shrugging and yawning every time I was dragged to join them all for a drink. He was interested in no subject and one day in desperation I asked him what he would like best to happen that afternoon.
He said, ‘I would like that stupid girl to leave my father alone and find some cowboy to divert her. My father is very easily swayed.’
Oh drama, drama. I couldn’t bear to leave them not knowing what was going to happen though I didn’t really like any of them enough to be on anyone’s side.
But the months went by and the time I could afford to go to Paris came eventually. I wrote to Francine and said it would be nice to meet for lunch. On the way to the restaurant I expected she would have difficulty in remembering what Christian’s name was. He seemed to be such an unlikely life partner. But there he was, the two of them smiling, and a bit of diamond flashing. They had just become engaged; would I come to their wedding? They insisted on giving me a ticket as a present, because I had introduced them, remember? Well, I was polite for a bit. They would have met anyway; it wasn’t fair to take a ticket. And then, of course, I gave in as we had all known I would.
It was an extraordinary wedding. The town hall one day, a church the next, two great feasts, lots of congratulation, everybody on both sides of the family assuring me of the good work I had done. If ever there was a couple so right for each other it was Christian and Francine. The sour Claude had become less shruggy. He said it was better for his father not to have a lonely old age. I swore to become a deep and intimate friend of the whole family, and we exchanged Christmas cards for about three years as an assurance that this is what indeed I was.
Then I had a party, a party all of my own in Paris. It sounds very grand, and in fact I thought I would never get a chance to write about it. It was in fact 12 people invited to my hotel bedroom to have some duty-free Irish whiskey, which I had smuggled in. I invited Christian and Francine among the guests. Maybe you know already what was going to happen, but I hadn’t a clue, and it staggered me for weeks. Francine arrived, but with her glum stepson Claude, less glum and deeply protective to the extent of embracing his stepmother in the most unacceptable manner, as the French would say.
Francine dragged me aside, telling me that I looked a bit better than before but not much. I should have my eyebrows done professionally and perhaps red hair what with being Irish. ‘Where’s Christian?’ I squeaked, knowing I was going to hear something strange.
‘Oh well, you know it was never very wise, when there is such an age difference and everything. He has gone to live in Switzerland. He is a very famous surgeon there now in a clinic, he is very happy. This man is interested really only in his work. You do understand and I would die in Switzerland. All those dull, clean, plain people. I would die outside Paris. He knows that, he writes from time to time. He did a very famous operation and it was in the papers.’
I’m really not able for all this sort of thing at all you know, despite my pretensions, and my voice was like some kind of puppet by the time I managed to get out the words, ‘And what about Claude?’
‘Oh, isn’t he marvellous? You are a genius, he is just perfect. Everybody would have such a happy holiday romance if they only went on a holiday with you. I can never thank you enough.’
I
knew that I would probably fall, but I didn’t expect to fall coming out of the railway station. Crowds of elegant Germans in posh ski wear tramped over me, a few British looked embarrassed and then looked away, an Italian man bent down and told me that it happened to the best of us and went away without picking me up. When the station was empty three porters got me to my feet and begged me not to take the next train home. Madame would be skiing like a bird, they assured me, and like a fool I believed them, and slid and crawled my way to the hotel.
It was full of sweat and heat, and pipes gurgling, and basements with people throwing skis around like darts, and radiant faces talking about the south piste, and worried brows discussing ski bindings. There was registration for the nursery school and a lot of hot rum, and a view from the bedroom like the best Christmas card ever and a very deep, slightly bruised sleep.
Next day, hot chocolate, plenty of buns to keep up the strength, into the ski pants that looked great in Dublin and cost a week’s salary. Beside everything else on the patio they looked like fancy dress. On with about four sweaters, in case I got frostbite and a jar of cream rubbed into my face in case there was sunstroke going around as well. Left, right, left, right, and we marched to the foothills of a crag.
The ski instructor was called Mike, and nobody fell in love with him. In three languages he told us how to put on our skis, which were waiting in battered splendour on the snow. A man fell over just bending down to pick them up, and I was so sympathetic that I rushed to help him up and fell on top of him, which was a bad start, since Mike said in three languages again that there would be time for that sort of thing later, could we concentrate on getting the skis on now please. We extricated ourselves, and a nice 12-year-old tied on both our skis for us.