Free Englishwoman in France by Wendy Robertson Page A

‘
Et vous?
’ I say politely.
    â€˜I am English also.’ She allows a trill of laughter to escape her small neat mouth. She sounds French. ‘But in France forty years now so I sound neither one nor the other.’
    â€˜Forty years?’ It’s been so long since I’ve been curious about any stranger.
    â€˜I came here in sixty-eight to Paris, to demonstrate with the students. I never managed to leave, I’m afraid. We had such a smashing time, despite the throwing of stones.’ She’s right about her accent. It
is
neither one thing nor another.
    â€˜But you live here in Agde?’ I say. ‘It’s a long way from Paris.’
    She nods. ‘It’s a long story, I’m afraid. After the
démonstrations
I sailed a boat down here on the rivers and canals with two of my new French friends who were also at the
démonstrations
. I married one of them and he became a
professeur
here at the Lycée. So I stayed and taught here as well.’ She shrugged. ‘
Hélas
, he is gone now, my Etienne. But we were a long time together.’ A small smile crosses her face.
    I want to lead her away from her sadness. I look through the café crowd at the square with its heroic statue. ‘This is a very mysterious place,’ I find myself saying.
    A smile lights up her face. ‘Ah, you see this? Everyone does not see it. Agde is a place of all the ages. It is simply lovely. Do you know that they’re digging down near the quayside just now? You will not believe it, my dear. A very large hole which shows you five cities layered down there, one on top of the other.’ She counts them on her fingers. ‘The Greek city, the Roman city and the layer of charred wood where the Spanish – I think it was the Spanish – burned the town. All time is here, my dear, right back to six hundred years before even Christ walked the earth.’
    I sit there relishing this old woman’s love for her town as it purrs through her strangely accented voice. My whole body is tingling like a struck bell at what she is saying. My glance moves behind her across the square to the road at the edge of the
promenad
e, where the traffic is slowly moving down to the roundabout.
    Suddenly a boy on a mountain bike charges on to the square in front of us and makes three circuits of the statue, finally making it rear, like a horse. Then he stands up on the pedals and bumps it down the steps on to the road, his hair streaming behind him. Men shout at him and cars beep their horns.
    I stand up and catch a flash of red hair before he vanishes down a side street opposite. I sit down with a thump and turn back to the old woman. ‘Did you see him? Did you see the boy?’ I demand.
    She raises a brown pencilled brow. ‘Who?
Le garçon aux cheveux rouges
? Riding the
bicyclette
like a stallion? Of course I saw him.’ A smile hovers around her thin lips. ‘A boy of adventure. Like
Swallows and Amazons
. Do children still read those books in England?’
    I could hug her but I don’t. ‘You really saw him, Madame?’
    â€˜Of course I saw him, my dear,’ she said quietly. ‘
Un garçon aux cheveux rouges.
Riding
une
bicyclette
.’
    I feel happiness, exultation running through my veins like quicksilver. If this is mad I
want
to be mad.
    Now she stands up and picks up her wicker basket. ‘We have to go to the market, Misou and I,’ she says, pulling on crocheted gloves. She shoulders her basket, scoops up the dog and walks across to her bike, the old sit-up-and-beg type, manacled to a bollard. Something scratches at the back of my mind, begging to be remembered: something about a bike and a bollard. But I can’t reach it. She puts Misou in the basket in front and ties her basket to the back pannier. Then she stands astride the bicycle, her eyes shaded from the bright sun by her small straw hat. Despite her nut-brown skin she looks now as