Narrow Dog to Carcassonne (18 page)

At one lock Monica was on the phone for a while, laughing and joking. What is going on? I asked. The gentleman said my French was impeccable, said Monica. He said my accent was distant and calm and grave, like dear voices that once he knew and now were still. He told me he had just been left a nice house in Epernay and he was free on Thursday. What about the lock? I asked. I knew there was something, said Monica.

Down on to the Marne, which ambles towards Paris. Fish rushed about, arrows in the green, bringing the word. We moored at Cumières and plugged in and went to explore. The town had a restaurant but it was shut, because it was Tuesday. We had not realized that on Mondays, and sometimes Tuesdays or Wednesdays, or at weekends or at lunchtime, or in the late summer, or in the winter, everything is shut in France.

Dozens of champagne businesses behind brass plates and pretty white gates. We ducked under the wire as the general store closed, and bought a local paper. Coming back we met a man with a greyhound—the first we had seen since crossing the Channel. The greyhound was tall and he stood awkwardly. He’s nice, said the owner, no problem. Jim sat back and swayed and wanted to play and dashed under the greyhound, and the greyhound didn’t mind but he wouldn’t play. I had another dog, said the owner, a saluki, and he died. Now Oslo won’t eat and he is ill all the time.

Two
péniches
were moored under the trees a hundred yards away—
Paris Un
and
Paris Deux
. Their cable slid into the power point on our municipal mooring. One of the bargees was walking his three spaniels, which fell on Jim and they rushed about. You crossed the Channel? asked the bargee. He was a little old chap, very oily, in overalls, with a deep voice, as if calling from the middle of the cut on a rainy night. We are waiting for a load, me and my brother and my father. My father bought this boat in Paris in 1932, and then the other one. They both carry three hundred tons. They call them
péniches
in the schools, but to us and everyone else they are just the boats. We do mainly cereals, but the harvest is bad because of the heat. We walked on and he went back to his boat. We all would have liked to talk longer, but there didn’t seem to be anything else to say.

I opened the paper and there was a picture of M. Thierry Charpentier, kneeling the better to support a catfish, which was the biggest ever caught in the Lac du Der, up the Marne. The catfish weighed thirty-four kilos and was nearly two metres long. M. Charpentier had caught fifty large catfish in the last year, for reasons which were not reported, and this was the biggest. By his expression the struggle could have gone either way, so next time we could see a picture of the catfish supporting M. Charpentier.

The findings of the expert inquiry into the thirteen hundred heatwave deaths in France were also revealed. It seemed the doctors were away on holiday and the hospital wards were closed, because it was late summer. The head of the health service did not testify, because he was on holiday.

Nothing else happened in Cumières, in fact nothing at all happened in Cumières, except the year turned and started to roll down into winter.

AT NOGENT L’ARTAUD WE HAD DINNER IN A
grill-crêperie
where there were many pictures of catfish like that caught by M. Charpentier, and carp too—Just take the bloody picture, Isabelle, my knees have gone. On the wall were heads of pike, sticking out, teeth ajar, as if to give us a song.

After dinner we had visitors from the big house by the pontoon. Laurence, said the gentleman, offering a bowl of biscuits, and Madeleine. He was a short balding man in his sixties and his wife was younger. After a scuffle we got them to sit where we wanted.

We meet a lot of lovely people, I said, but I get nervous and forget their names. So I have developed a technique of remembering by association, which I will share with you. Laurence, I will think of you always with a turban, like Lawrence of Arabia, and I will think of your charming wife Madeleine with a moustache like Marcel Proust, who made the
madeleine
famous. In that way I will have remembrance of things past.
Monsieur
, said the gentleman, my name is Georges, and this is my wife Laurence, and the
madeleines
are the cakes.

They asked us back to their house for whisky. Laurence had her own communications firm, and Georges helped her though he was retired. The firm was based in Paris, an hour away on the train. Times were hard, they said—five firms bidding for every contract. The recession isn’t over yet—there are still ten per cent unemployed. And the law is set against the entrepreneur; you can’t make a move, you can’t win.

Georges wrote poetry, including translations of Portuguese fados—

Come and bring your guitar

Then we will go together

Singing our sweet fado

In the streets of Bairro Alto

He asked if we had visited the Arthur Rimbaud Museum, and recited part of ‘The Drunken Boat’. He was seventeen when he wrote that, said Laurence, it’s enough to make you think What’s the use.

Do you write poetry, Thierry? asked Georges. I did, I said, then I went into market research. It is hard being a poet, said Georges, and recited the whole of Baudelaire’s poem ‘The Albatross’. I had forgotten how sad it was: the dying albatross, mocked by the sailors. As Georges reached the final lines I joined in—

The poet is the rider on the storm

Mocking the arrow, prince of all the winds.

An exile here on earth, tormented, scorned,

Trying to walk, dragging his giant’s wings.

We shouted the lines together, two fat old men, and waved our arms, and for a moment it all made sense—the playground mockery, the teachers who hated us, the teams that dropped us, the girls who said no, the invitations that didn’t arrive, the interviews failed, the contracts lost—it all made sense. We were The Albatross—what did we expect?

HATTED AND GLOVED IN THE EARLY SUN, WE sailed down to La Ferté-sous-Jouarre, and arrived before lunch and walked up the high street.

The French have developed noise more than all other aspects of their culture, except perhaps eating and drinking, which itself requires communal shouting. It is not just their jet pilots who make the welkin rattle. If the French find a quiet river bank they bring out African drums. As their emergency vehicles pass, the birds drop from the trees. We went for a coffee and the walls heaved as Jean-Philippe Smet urinated on the grave of Elvis. Outside three people with little motorbikes and big helmets were brewing up a Canaveral roar. They racketed up the street and back again, and away along the Marne, their din Dopplering down as they neared Paris.

I wonder how those machines are sold?

Monsieur, that one is a nice colour, but it doesn’t have the decibels. Now this one has the Fartblaster, which can be heard fifteen miles away. It deafened my uncle permanently and I can thoroughly recommend it. The bike in the corner brought great success to your friend Guillaume. On their very first date his new girlfriend said OK you can have me right here and now on the pavement, if you will just turn that fucking thing off.

There was something odd about the high street in La Ferté-sous-Jouarre. As usual there was loud music, but not the usual competing strains—the tune was reinforced by a speaker every twenty yards. This was official noise: municipal noise. The broken-beat lead guitar was the mayor, with the town clerk on bass. The song that followed was the lady mayoress, to whom love had given short measure. At lunchtime the shops shut and the music was turned off and I hope the mayor laid down his guitar and went home and showed a bit of interest.

As the afternoon sun moved along the saloon Jim moved with it like a sundial—Gnomon the Wonder Dog. Jim sleeps for twenty-three hours, and seeks to divide what remains of the day between running at forty miles an hour and going down the pub. We took him on to the lawns along the Marne. There was a baby in a pushchair starting to eat an egg sandwich.

A Newfoundland puppy tumbled by, with a black Labrador bitch and their owner, a lady of a certain age. Jim licked the crumbs of egg off his muzzle and leaped upon the bitch.

Ah
madame
, excuse me, stop it Jim, oh dear, said Monica. It does not matter,
madame
, said the lady of a certain age—he is young, it is the enthusiasm, it is the nature, who can complain—but she is old, she will say no. But the bitch did not say no.

Oh I do apologize, said Monica, pulling Jim back on to terra firma, I’m awfully sorry, oh dear, Jim that’s not nice—
madame
I am desolated. No problem,
madame
, said the lady—he is a fine young man. She is honoured.

MONICA TURNED HARD LEFT, SWINGING THE tiller. Her jaw was set, her gaze ahead. The windmill generator fizzed and the
Phyllis May
swung from the hip and smashed into a wave, breaking it in two. That’s the left turn across the shipping lanes, I said to the gentleman at the counter. That was the turning towards France, after the Goodwin Sands. That was the point where we were committed. Your colleague made a lovely job of this—look at the colours—I can feel the spray. It was me,
monsieur
, said the gentleman, I made this print. The sky was not straight, so I straightened the sky.

Outside in the square five brown lads surrounded Monica. Look at the dog—oh my God his muscles. I bet he’s fast—how much did he cost
madame
, how much does he eat?

I bought a paper at the kiosk in the square. This was the third English paper I had bought in Meaux and the lady in the kiosk and I were getting close. I apologized for leaving the next day. The French say
Bonjour
and
Bon voyage
without thinking, and
Bonne journée
when they mean it. The lady in the kiosk struggled, the occasion deserving something further.
Bonne navigation
, she said at last, and we both smiled with relief.

I tied Jim outside the fruit shop.
Ah monsieur
, you are the big Englishman from the thin boat with the narrow dog and the little wife. I have seen you when I walked with Crusoe. Where is your narrow dog,
monsieur
? Why have you tied him up outside? You should bring him in so he can say hello to Crusoe. Crusoe stretched his polar body across the aisle, so no one could leave until he said so.

In the fish shop the lady weighed her two crabs, one in each hand, and frowned. One moment, she said, and went inside, and returned with both crabs cut in half. That one,
monsieur
, that one is the best.

Meaux has not decided which side of the river it is on. This is because it lies in the crook of the Marne, asleep in its turquoise embrace. The town was a mess, spread about, dug up, the cathedral wrapped in brown paper, but there was plenty of space in Meaux and plenty of time. Under the bridges chub rolled in the misty river. Teenage girls dawdled in pairs and threes, and now and then a man in a business shirt passed, walking almost quickly. Mooring and electricity and water were free in Meaux and each morning a roach came to manicure the boat.

On the banks among the flowers a madman chatted to himself all day—When I say something, then that’s it, it’s finished, decision time; when I say something then that’s it, it’s finished, decision time. Fish shot around in shoals, and when they paused they changed colour and disappeared. If they stopped somewhere patched, then they went patched as well. Rivers are paved with invisible fish, looking at you.

The heat had returned, and I sat on the pontoon, and tiddlers tapped on my toes. There are towns that are off-centre, towns that have run quite out of square, but in Meaux they have straightened the sky.

GEORGES’S E-MAIL ABOUT THINGS TO DO IN Paris has come through, said Monica.

To the left towards the west are Rouen, Le Havre, the open sea, the Channel, and Normandy with the shade of William the Conqueror, Queen Matilda and her tapestry at Bayeux, the invasion beaches, apples, cider, butter and cheese, the Atlantic, and a little to the right London Bridge.

Oh Lord, I said, a French description. But we’ve got a month, we’ll find our way. A long day’s boating and a night at Lagny, among the holiday caravans.

The Saint-Maur underground passage goes in one direction, claims the
Guide Navicarte
. How can a passage go in one direction? I asked. The people can go in one direction, but not the passage. Perhaps this is a new mouth of hell, said Monica, I guess that would go in one direction. It says watch out for floating bodies because they are always plentiful at Saint-Maur.

An early start for Paris, where Monica had booked us a mooring in the Port of the Bastille. The suburbs of Neuilly and Nogent were pleasant, with trees and high embankments, and the Saint-Maur underground passage carried traffic in both directions, with no bodies.

To drop us towards the Seine there were three locks a hundred yards long. We waited for an hour outside the first two and when we entered the keepers pulled the plug while we were still on the lock-side with the ropes and we had to jump back on board. In the third lock the water rushed in one end and out the other for forty minutes and the lock-keepers rushed up one end and down the other for forty minutes and then they regained control and let us pass.