THE FLOWER BEDS WERE BRIGHT AND THE lawns cut, and the trees dressed in sunlight overall. The Yonne was green and blue, like the Channel. We had been in Sens three weeks already, and this should be our last day, but I was in trouble. I left Jim, betrayed, on the boat, and struggled over the bridge. A man was polishing the rails.
I need both your feet, said the
podologue
, so I can see if they are in any way similar. Ah, you have a corn. In France we do not do much of the jogging—we believe one should not exaggerate. I will cure your corn but it may come back and then you must come and see me again. You are not leaving soon?
I went to a bar to celebrate the loss of my limp.
Madame
, I said, I have seen the French drinking in the morning and in England that is not normal. But out of respect for your culture I am prepared to have a brandy and a coffee after breakfast on occasions of importance. Is this behaviour correct?
You must be the gentleman from the long boat with the little wife and the thin dog, said the lady. Of course,
monsieur
, you are correct. But it is even more correct in the morning to have a café and a marc, or a café and a calvados—
un café calva
. That sounds nice, I said, a
café calva
—what is marc? It is an alcohol, said the lady. It is made from the residue after the grapes have been pressed. It is very strong. A Frenchman might drink many
cafés
in the morning but he will drink only one glass of spirits.
It was a fishing bar: a fishing shop with a beer pump and a coffee machine and two stools. On the shelves were jars of plastic worms. What is the water like in the Yonne? I asked. Here upstream it is clean,
monsieur
. There are trout, which are sensitive.
Prescott came at me and took the lower part of my face into his mouth. Prescott was the size of a brown cow, and as affable. He is
un dogue allemand
, said the lady. Prescott went behind the bar and the lady turned on the tap and he reached up and sucked down a gallon of water and the lady wiped his chops. You must return when you are accompanied by your thin dog, said the lady, it will be
un contraste saisissant
, and Prescott likes small dogs. We do hope we will see you again,
monsieur
, Prescott and I.
Back on the boat Jim and I could hear the roar of battle up in the town as Monica and France Telecom fought over the commissioning of a French mobile phone. A fortnight, they had said—just wait in Sens and all will be arranged. If not
quinze jours
, a few weeks at the most. Then you must go to Orléans to buy the cables to complete the connection to your laptop. But if you stay here until the summer all will certainly be arranged, if we can get the parts.
On the quay an old man stopped us. My whippet died seven years ago, he said, he was fourteen. He was the same colour as your whippet—sand. When I see your whippet of sand I weep. He wept. I hope you will not go soon, he said, then I can see your Sheem again.
It was the first time Sens had been open—the pedestrian street up from the river with its flower shops, pavement cafés, patisseries,
traiteurs
with feasts of pâté: windows full of painted robots, oriental bracelets, pancakes, lacy underwear, children’s clothes, futile gifts in royal blue—everything different from home, often nicer. I looked through the window of the phone shop but Monica and France Telecom were well matched and this one would go the distance. I am not at my best with the public sector so Jim and I went across the cathedral square and through the indoor market. Banded brick and beams and light from great triangular windows up high. Meats and fishes and cheeses, and vegetables you could devour raw.
And so to a bar—I hooded my eyes, and said
Un gafé galva
, in a very deep voice, trying to sound like Jean Gabin, a gangster,
un mec, un maquereau
. To my surprise I got served. Next to us a couple of old chaps looking at the colour pictures in the
Liberated Person of Sens
. It’s you, isn’t it? they said. No, I said, I am I—the man in the photograph is an impostor and I have never seen the woman or the boat. Pardon,
monsieur
, they said, my God, we are desolated, we are not polite—but
monsieur
, excuse us, there on the floor is the very dog, the thin dog,
le chien étroit
, with the big ears, looking at us. I took my Breton sailor’s hat off the table and put it on. We hope you will stay, they said, and your thin dog. Tomorrow is the annual fair.
Jim and I walked back down the shopping street and everyone was reading the
Liberated Person of Sens
, and poking each other and pointing. Three police came up towards us, one a woman, in bright blue. They touched their weapons and looked at each other.
I waited for Monica in our favourite bar by the bridge—It’s you, shouted the waiter, and so did the chaps at the bar, on their fifth calvados of the morning. No, I said, the man in the newspaper is my cousin. You are not going today? they asked—tomorrow is the annual fair. And you are famous, and your thin boat looks nice on the quay. There is a man who will come and help you polish it.
Jim put up his ears and went to look out of the window and ten minutes later Monica came in. There is something going on here, I said. You know Ulysses, whom I so closely resemble—when he reached the Sirens, they tried to keep him and his crew for ever. The liberated people of Sens have decided they don’t want us to go. France Telecom is in on it, and the police and the
podologue
. The mayor wants to put notices along the motorway—
Sens—sa cathédrale: son narrowboat
fleuri: sa petite anglaise: son toutou étroit
. If we are not careful we will run aground on the Yonne like the Evans family. Tomorrow you and Jim must put your hands over your ears and I will tie myself to the generator pole and we will go full speed for the south. Another day here and we’ll never get to Carcassonne.
Next morning the thunder and wheedling of the annual fair rolled down to the river, and the sweet anguish of the lady mayoress spilled out of the speakers and coiled round our prop. But we held our course upriver and the music fell behind us and was gone.
WE SAILED INTO A FALSE AUTUMN, WITH branches bare, or yellow leaves uncharged with chlorophyll and the leaf-cases of the poplars gold and red, unrolling and floating into the stream. The spring sun came round low and the trees shone orange and I pulled down the peak of my cap. Over all before us lay the Plateau de Langres and six hundred miles away the sea.
When we woke, Villeneuve-sur-Yonne had swept its stone quay and turned its pansies to the sun and picked up its litter and checked that its free electricity was pure sine wave, clean enough for our laptops, strong enough for our fan heater and our kettle.
A man came by with a dog. It was a small dog with a grey muzzle and a kind face. What race is your dog,
monsieur
? I asked. He has no race, said the gentleman—my Socrates is a dog. I found him by the side of the road. I was driving my car and I saw him staggering and falling down. He had been tied up and left and his collar had bitten into his neck and he was bloody all down one side. The vet said he had not eaten for a month. It was more than a year before he was well. How can anyone do such a thing,
monsieur
?
Another man came up. He had a long head and short muscular legs and a wide smile and he shook our hands. There may be another boat later today, he said, though probably not, and if you are leaving I will go and open the lock. He went back to his white van with VNF on the side.
The lock was two hundred yards long. It had sloping sides, and a little pontoon for pleasure boats. As the lock fills the pontoon runs up the side on rails, with occasional jerks to throw into the water anyone standing on it holding a rope. The lock-keeper closed the gates behind us and walked to open the upstream paddles; then he walked back to the pontoon. Ah
madame
, I started to learn English but the lessons cost four hundred francs an hour. England is such an interesting place. I have the cards of many English who come through. This lady wants me to find her a cottage by a lock.
I am reading a book now about England, he went on. It is called
Jack the Disemboweller
. It is written by a lady who has been many times to England and is a specialist. She knows all about your country—all about the fogs and the gas lamps and the prostitutes. It was once believed,
madame
, that Jack the Disemboweller was the Queen’s physician, then that he was a member of the royal family, but now it is revealed that he was Walter Sickert, a painter. He suffered from an abnormality in his genitals—the lock-keeper made a large gesture below his waist—which caused him much grief and as a child he was ill-treated.
The pontoon tried to throw Monica into the lock. My husband is writing a book called
Narrow Dog to Carcassonne
, she said, and pointed at Jim on the roof. A gripping coincidence, said the lock-keeper—I too am writing my memoirs. As we left the lock he waved to Monica.
Bonne chance
, he called to me, and he made a scribbling sign like one calling for the bill, and we exchanged a salute.
The Yonne has crystal water like the Lys, and a broad valley like the Trent and Mersey. It has hills like the Thames south of Oxford. It is as wide as the Seine, and bluer than the Marne. I suppose there is a more beautiful river, but hardly in this world. There is a particularity about the Yonne—thousands upon thousands of poplars in woods and groves. They are planted in rows and the low sun made lamps of their new foliage and their trunks crossed and recrossed in lanes and you could see the hills and the yellow rape fields behind.
PAST THE PERFUMED BUSHES, PAST THE HOTEL that was shut because it was Sunday evening. Monica and I walked on wet cherry flowers, and Jim drifted above them. Over the bridge and into the town on the hill. Joigny had been disembowelled by excavators, its entrails exposed through the pavements. There are wood-framed and carved houses hundreds of years old but the narrow streets of Joigny were full of gravel and the town was sad and dirty.
A Moroccan restaurant was open. I asked for a half-litre of beer. Fifty centilitres, I explained, a big one,
un demi
. The waiter smiled and said
Monsieur
, here in The France one does not find glasses that size. But the steak was good and the African wine was a beaker full of the warm south, much needed in draughty Burgundy.
There were not many chips with the steak. Jim was too lazy to sit up so he turned his head round and gave us the stare upside down. Better watch out, said Monica, or he will report us to the RSPCW. They will come in the narrow vans with the brindled paint-work and staring headlights, their straight sixes throbbing. I gave Jim some chips and he ate them backwards.
NEXT DAY I NOTICED THE RIVER WAS FULL OF thin green fish the size of sardines. I could ask someone what they were but what’s the use? They would say something like
Monsieur
, those are
les norberts dentressangles
, and you forget what they said and are none the wiser. Or maybe they call the creatures
theen green feesh
. With such empty thoughts rattling in my head I set out with Jim for a quick one. Monica stayed on the boat for the latest round with France Telecom. When we left Sens they had disabled our e-mail.
Central Casting had worked hard in the bar by the bridge. It was full of gangsters from Marseilles—
mecs
, pimps,
maquereaux
: swarthy, dwarfish, skinny, misshapen. As usual they had overdone it a little—one chap had a ponytail to his waist like an unravelled mooring rope and a T-shirt with the device of the Goat of Bentès—the Devil himself. And the women need not have been so menacing, so dirty, so small.
A group was gambling at the far end of the bar, banging down cards and shouting words I did not understand. At our end two men in distressed black: shirts and boots. They were normal, even well-built—leading players. One was the hero type, a decent man at heart, who had lately drifted into murdering people, while his friend had been at it for some time. They were unshaven and wore gold, some of it in the ears. Jim went up to them.
My girlfriend had one of these, said the hero.
Un wee Pete
—they are racers and can run at sixty-five kilometres an hour. And you hunt rabbits with them, with a torch. Yes, I said—indeed one has some sport. He looks feeble, said the hero, he looks delicate, but he is solid, he is robust. They turned Jim over and squeezed his thighs and frowned and drummed their fingers on his chest and pulled open his mouth to see his four rows of teeth and spanned his loins with their fingers. Jim didn’t mind at all.
Monsieur?
asked the
patron
. A large beer, a half-litre, I said defiantly—fifty centilitres—
un demi
—a big one, and do you have some sheep? Of course,
monsieur
. The glass he brought me contained forty centilitres. No crisps. You can’t take on a whole culture, I thought.
I told the assassins that I reckoned Jim could run at forty miles an hour and we tried to work out if that was the same as sixty-five kilometres and failed, but we agreed he could run very fast. I was hungry and asked myself how can it be that a French
tabac
is full of drink and cigarettes but the only food is chewing gum?
Crackle crackle
behind me and the Goat of Bentès—the Devil himself—hurried in from the street, under his arm a green bag half a metre long. The
patron
came to my table with seven crisps in a saucer. I offered one to Jim and he turned it down. To show appreciation I ordered another forty centilitres. It all came to nearly ten euros, but think of the size of the cast.
I WOKE AND PULLED BACK THE CURTAIN AND over the other side of the Yonne a grebe made a splash landing in the rain. You have got to like grebes. They have crowns on their heads and rust-coloured cheeks and they sit low in the saddle, though not as low as a cormorant. They let you come close and then they dive and come up in Avignon. One day on Tixall Wide near Stone a pair of grebes was teaching its brood to fish alongside our boat. The youngsters rushed around just below the surface, accomplishing nothing. They were striped like bull’s-eyes. The adults dived and came up with fish which they gave to the juveniles.