Our House is Certainly Not in Paris (31 page)

My only sadness is knowing that, as the years pass, so too will some of the older inhabitants of Cuzance. Though my encounters with them are brief, the fleeting moments and short exchanges, bring a layer of richness through the sense of times past that their eyes have seen – the impact of the war, the rapid changes in the world and daily life of the village – and yet an air of timelessness pervades their unhurried pace.

The days and seasons seem to ebb and flow around them; Monsieur and Madame's Chanteur's daily meals under their walnut tree, Madame Dal's daily
promenades
with her beloved
chien,
Monsieur Arnal's customary seat outside his hotel, watching our
petite
village go by; Jean-Claude's strolls with Henriette, tugging at her lead, impatient to explore her new world.

The very land and buildings seem to hold history within their hands, offered as a gift if you peer inside the old carved stone doorways, beyond the pots of scarlet geraniums and aromatic lavender. It is a strange paradox, a summer in Cuzance. The days slip through your fingers like a rapidly unravelling ball of wool, yet time also stands still.

There is an almost tangible thread woven through the village, that connects the past and stretches to the future.

Off to market, past our
petite maison
.

There was a ferocious thunderstorm, complete with icy bullets of hail on our last morning. It was a portent of the swiftly changing season. It would also transpire to be an omen for our last day in France.

A night in Paris was not quite like our morning in Paris. Far from it. It was not planned, it was not on the itinerary. A night in Paris probably most exemplifies the differences between us; Stuart's casual nonchalant approach to life and mine – often the diametric opposite.

We packed up the house and put it under wraps for another year, with literally just seconds to spare before Jean-Claude, Françoise and of course Henriette picked us up. First step of the always long and arduous return journey, Brive-la-Gaillarde station for the four-hour trip to Paris. Just prior to our departure, Monsieur and Madame Chanteur came to farewell us with a gift of
prunier
from their tree, for our journey. I had no inkling that it was the last time we would ever see them together.

After parking, in one of those split-second accidental timings, just as I reached for my suitcase, Jean-Claude closed the boot. It connected directly with my nose as I was bending down. There was no hint, bad enough as it was, that there was infinitely more stress, calamity and drama about to unfold.

Our timing was quite fine as it was. A mere three hours to get a taxi from Gare d'Austerlitz to Charles de Gaulle airport, with the mandatory two hours – minimum – check-in time for our flight. This is Stuart's relaxed travel style, not mine. I already knew that the tight timeline did not allow for any unanticipated events. I was anxious already. What in fact happened was beyond prediction in any scenario of unforeseen circumstances. It was the sort of event that you cannot possibly make up, let alone imagine.

French trains travel fast, very fast – about 198 miles per hour. SNCF is renowned for its swift, efficient service. If a train is running two minutes late, it is a cause for considerable consternation. I was sitting next to the window, unusual in itself for Stuart usually has the window seat. I was bidding France farewell, watching the rich green countryside, villages and farms flash past.

Out of nowhere, a heavy shower of enormous rocks flew up against the entire width of the window in a deafening roar. The thunder of the impact echoed around the carriage.

Large, star-shaped imprints were left in the thick glass. I grabbed Stuart's hands, and in utter silence, looked at him in fear and incredulity. It is astonishing what the mind can process in a matter of a few, sharply delineated seconds. I was convinced the train was going to roll. I thought that the end was near. Much later, when chatting to others in our three-hour state of entrapment, I discovered it was precisely what others thought too. I believed our train crash was going to be a leading item on the evening news.

The train jolted to a shuddering, clanging halt. Each and every passenger gasped aloud. We all looked at each other in shock and disbelief. There was then an eerie calm and quietness. Despite the alarming circumstances, there was no sense of panic at all. The first of many SNCF announcements followed shortly. A delightful sixteen-year-old French school boy, Leo, travelling with his younger sister, Claudette, was sitting near us and became our self-appointed interpreter. First, ‘The train will be delayed.' Next, ‘The train will be delayed indefinitely.' And then, infinitely more alarming, ‘The train has been sabotaged.' The very use of the word ‘sabotaged' sent a chill of horror through the carriage. All I could think was that it was a very grave word to use – the implications were endless.

We all waited – for an interminable three hours. What struck me most was the extraordinary calm and degree of patience of those around us; the young, elderly, women with babies and
petite enfants
. As the electricity had failed, the air conditioning did not work. The temperature rose steadily while we were told that negotiations were underway to resolve the situation. Stuart walked through to the next carriage to investigate. It was at precisely this point that the two adjoining carriages were disconnected. I jumped out of my seat to see where he was. We could see each other through the glass doors at the end of each carriage. Later, he told me that he thought the carriage he was in, was going to be shunted off and we would be separated for who knows how long and with no means of communicating.

Once again too, as with many major and critical times in our lives, our
portable
let us down. This seems to be a recurring dilemma for any hugely significant juncture in our lives. initially it did work for our first contact to our helpline in Cuzance. We had just enough charge left to place a panicked call to Françoise to explain our predicament.

Oui, oui
, she immediately grasped our dilemma and arranged to call the airline. We felt confident that in her capable hands, all would be sorted.
Portable
charge rapidly ebbing, we soon called her again, highly anxious to know that it was all organised. Yes, she had contacted the airline; yes, all should be fine to transfer our tickets. All we needed to do was call the airline by 10 pm to confirm that we had to change our flight to the following day. Françoise could no longer communicate with us either for our phone was now dead.

Next, the source of the sabotage was identified. The hydraulics for the brakes were located in a section underneath the train. The brakes had failed. Steel rods had been placed on the tracks to stop the train and cause damage. It did not help matters for our future travel plans by train in France to be told by Leo, that this was apparently a frequent occurrence while travelling on SNCF. Whether he meant trains breaking down or actual sabotage, I did not enquire further.

Finally, a replacement train arrived. We were all moved off, carriage by carriage – eight in all – in a very orderly manner. Previously, while Stuart was trapped, the train driver had nevertheless been able to walk through each carriage, explaining to everyone what had happened and what would eventuate. I was struck too by how calm and contained and capable he seemed. I was also astonished that I stood out as the only foreigner in our carriage and that, despite his huge degree of responsibility and inordinate stress he must have been under, the train driver paused to explain the situation to me personally.

Yet again, it was like a scene from a movie; this time however, one I would not have chosen to be in. However, this time we were in it. We had to hand our luggage down and then gingerly descend the steep steps, supported at the bottom by an SNCF person on each side to help us jump down. Despite the arms that gripped me firmly, it was still quite a jolt landing on the tracks. I wondered how the many elderly passengers coped, for it was quite a long way down to the tracks. On the replacement train, there was another SNCF worker, who grabbed each of us by our arms to haul us up.

Finally, we sped in to Paris – there was only about forty minutes left of the journey.

It passed quickly as we were all given a cardboard box with water and packets of food in it. We needed it by then, for it was almost midnight in Paris when at long last we pulled into Gare d'Austerlitz – an entirely different world to the bustling daytime hours when the station is full of travellers setting off across to the four corners of Europe.

Thirty of us then waited for another two, very long hours. At first, SNCF seemed to be very organised, taking everyone's name and a note of our destinations. Our initial high hopes of the situation being sorted quickly, rapidly faded. Another hour elapsed and by this point, passengers returned to the counter, impatient for results. By now, the organisation at the outset, seemed to have disintegrated. There was much consulting of lists and scurrying back and forth to an office with a closed door. Some passengers simply gave up, and walked off in to the Paris night.

Then at last, we were given a taxi voucher and told we had been booked into an airport hotel, ‘All Seasons'. Another SNCF employee took us to the taxi rank and twelve hours after leaving our little house, we were on our way for a few hours' sleep. Now I don't have a good sense of direction at the best of times, but on the virtually empty roads of Paris, in the pre-dawn hours, even I knew the taxi driver was going round in circles, back and forth past the same myriad of airport hotels. The French to tell the taxi driver this was absolutely beyond either of us at this point in our convoluted and dramatic return home. The Ibis Hotel turned out in fact to be our destination; it was actually one and the same as ‘All Seasons' though there was not a sign in sight to indicate this.

However, our ordeal was not quite over.

The taxi driver was clearly annoyed and frustrated by this turn of events. He helped us into the hotel with our luggage, eager to be paid and off into the early morning. As we checked in at the counter, it transpired that he did not accept SNCF taxi vouchers.

Apparently only blue taxis take them. His taxi was not blue...

We simply slumped in weary resignation against the reception counter. We had run out of energy to deal with another obstacle. The taxi driver's infuriation was growing by the second. To our enormous relief, the night manager called SNCF and got a fax sent that he presented to the taxi driver. He was to then take it to SNCF to be paid. He walked off into the night without a backward glance – still furious. We booked a wake-up call for only a matter of hours away. We needed to get to the airport as early as possible to sort our flight out. Rumbling snores that heavily penetrated the paper-thin walls of our hotel room, were the concluding note to our protracted journey, still in France when we should have been in Abu Dhabi.

We may well have been in Paris for our last evening but in reality we were in a cultural wasteland, a sea of bland, identical airport hotels. There were no smoky, late night jazz bars, no enticing bistros, there was nothing, nothing at all. It was not quite the last night in Paris that dreams are made of.

After the stressful, exhausting chain of events, and despite the improbably late hour, a drink was called for. While we are not mini-bar people, this was a mini-bar occasion.

The basic airport hotel room did not run to one. We returned to reception and in imploring tones, we asked the hotel night staff on the front desk, ‘Do you have a bar?'

‘
Non
,' was the sombre response.

Were they serious? Absolutely everyone drinks absolutely everywhere in France.

And now it would seem, we were booked into the only hotel in France without a bar.

We were in a hotel airport wilderness. Not a bar in sight. Could this truly be Paris, the city of dreams?

‘Where can we get a drink then?' we gasped out. It was now 3 am. At the Hotel Western across the road, we were told. We staggered out into the cold dark night, not a vestige of Paris in the air. We staggered into the hotel as four
gendarme
walk briskly out onto the desolate streets
.
The staff on the desk were the only other people around. We repeated our question, ‘Is your bar still open?'

‘
Non
,' we were told.

Back to the empty cold streets, up to our room for the one
petite
bottle of wine we had left over from our disastrous train journey, out to the street again, collapse on a bench, to be approached by the only other person possibly awake in the whole of Paris, a derelict who tried to engage us in conversation. None of this could possibly be happening. We politely dispatched him; a shared
apéritif
; albeit warm, never tasted so good.

And so, to the airport. The queue for our flight already stretched in such a way that we knew it would be foolish to simply join it, and naively assume that the transfer organised by Françoise had all been smoothly put in place. There are some lessons you do learn in life that stand true the world over; not to trust the mechanisms of bureaucracy. How true this proved.