Free Leontyne by Richard Goodwin Page B

minutes his little anchor snagged on to the motor and he had it inboard in no time. While he got the engine going again, I went for a walk round the town to find out what was going on. There was a procession from some shrine about three kilometres away to the main church and I could hear the chanting as a statue of the Virgin was carried down the steep streets. Two naughty boys who had obviously been forced to join in were being hissed into line by a stern priest.
    After some inquiries, I discovered that the main event was to be a strange race where the contestants ran for a while, then mounted their bikes and, depending on what class they were in, cycled off into the woods and hills for either eighteen or forty kilometres. This meant that it was very difficult to discover who was doing what. The first batch set off amid a good deal of incomprehensible chat on the Tannoy system, interspersed with jolly music. The second batch left just as the first lot were returning. The exhausted runners were given cups of water by pretty girls stretched out along the road and then, to my bafflement, the contestants ran to their bicycles and immediately changed their trousers, vigorously assisted by their wives and girlfriends. Once the pants were on, the cycling shoes, which had been neatly laid out, were quickly laced up and off they pedalled. The hours passed, exhausted runners came and went, cyclists returned, the running buffet got going. The prizes were displayed. There is, in France, a huge industry in manufacturing cups for sporting events such as these. In this event alone, in little Fumay, there were at least thirty trophies to be dispensed. I could see it was all going to take a very long time and returned to watch the proceedings from the barge.
    The prettiest of the girls who had been dispensing the cups of cold mineral water to the runners turned out to be one of the representatives of the sponsors of the event, Citroën, and she was drafted into the job of chief trophy-giver and kisser. The casual observer can be confused by the protocol of cheek kissing in France. It would appear that in Northern France the norm is three kisses starting on the right cheek, but from Paris southwards it is four kisses, two on either cheek. By this time there was a sizable crowd picnicking on the grass by the boat. The families of the contestants cheered their men and the teams they were in, and everyone basked in the sunshine of that May afternoon in this beautiful place. Fathers took toddlers for tiny walks, holding their babies’ hands above their heads to steady them; a Moroccan woman sterilized her baby’s bottle by giving it a good suck before she put it in her offspring’s mouth. The buffet cooked sausages and
frites
and the girls behind the counter flirted with the men of their choice. Even the police broke out a case of Orangina and smiled a bit. Gradually the crowd drifted away. As the buffet was packed up, the organizers played old-fashioned
bal musette
accordion music over the loudspeakers, and the buffet girls picked their partners and danced on the platform where the prizes had been given.
    I left Fumay with a tinge of sadness.
Liberté, égalité
and
fraternité
seemed to be working admirably in this little town with its high unemployment and beautiful valley. My French is passable, and it was a real pleasure to converse with people and not be able to hear the slightest trace of class in their voices, as one does in England.
    The
Leo
ploughed up through the valley of the Meuse and through the part that is called Les Dames de Meuse. Here there are three ill-defined ridges in the heavily wooded hillside which are Les Dames. They were so named after God had turned three unfaithful wives into parts of the hillside when their husbands had returned from the wars and found out what they had been up to. This ravishingly beautifulstretch, or
bief
as the French call the stretch of water between two locks, is what makes