Chapter One – Moule I
It had all started four years before, in Great-Britain, in Kent, in Whitstable, during the Summer of 1971. I had been studying English, among various subjects in the secondary school and my accomplishments in the Language of Chaucer as well as Simon and Garfunkel were far from impressive. Consequently, my parents had decided that I should spend the month of August in sunny Kent, with a view to make up for all the ground lost over the previous years. To us Latin people, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Romanian are relatively easy languages and by and large close to one another. But the languages of Northern Europe remain a total mystery and, unfortunately, the most difficult of all to pronounce for a Latin palate, is the universal language of business, i.e. Anglo-American. To make mattes worse, I was supposed to take over the family Lingeries shop on the day of my 21st birthday and many of our customers being American and English, I really had to clean my act. Tough luck, then. But there was no way to avoid it…
As the fourth year of secondary school was drawing to a long-awaited conclusion, I discovered that Kent was going to be my final destination after spending the month of July in my native Touraine, in the Loire Valley. The last few days before the departure were filled with mixed feelings of apprehension and anticipation. I wondered what it would be like to find myself in a foreign land, for the first time, among people speaking a language completely alien to me and probable interpreting my silences and puzzled looks as proofs of acute mental deficiencies…
The D-day finally appeared round the corner. The participants were to gather in the Gare du Nord at the crack of dawn. The train was going to take us to Boulogne, then a ferry would need about two hours to reach Dover and a coach would finish the trip and deliver us to our host families around five o’clock. The young boys and girls kept on arriving, accompanied by their parents. For many of us it was going to be the first holiday abroad, without our parents to keep an eye on whatever mischievous activities we had in mind.
There was a good fifty of us, aged between thirteen and eighteen. I was one of the youngest, which did not do tremendously to appease my discomfort. There were a couple of girls absolutely breath-taking, on whom the taller guys, in their last year before University would soon attempt to cast their nets. Most of us wore jeans and T-shirt, all of us casual garments, except one, whom the parents had persuaded to wear a suit, in order to make a good impression on the host family.
‘Hey boss, where do you think you’re going? A wedding or your holy communion?’ A surf-instructor look-alike thought appropriate to exclaim, pointing at me.
I did not know what to answer and looked away, hoping that he would find another ‘wiping-cloth’. Not that I was afraid of a male confrontation. I had been diagnosed as hyperactive when I was a child and my parents had put me into the arms of a Tai-Chi master (I should say mistress), an Americano-Chinese girl, daughter of a customer, some twelve older than me, who had taught me the 18 basic movements, than gradually brought me up to a level when I could walk around Paris at night without wetting my pants from anxiety, let alone, and mostly, the art and pleasure of meditation, but this is another story..
‘Can’t you see that he’s still a child! Leave him alone!’ One of the older girls said, giggling. She was a tall blonde, a stunning figure, slim, but overtly. The kind that you see once in the street and walks in your dreams forever, a little like a waffle vendor on the Pont de l’Alma.
I mentally thanked her, beckoned to her, but did not pluck up the necessary courage to walk up to her, fall on my knees and ask her to marry me on the spot!
The English teacher in charge called us to attention and requested us to bid our parents farewell. That was it, the dreaded departure towards the unknown. As we heard our names, we entered the train and filled the 8-seater cars one by one. I prayed fervently that the Almighty would demonstrate his unbounded and unerring wisdom by sparing me the vicinity of the surfer for the three coming hours. A name was called out, to which I did not pay attention and I saw him enter the train. My heart was beating faster. There were four seats left in his car and I was ready to exchange half my pocket money for the month against a seat at the other end of the cortege. As others followed him, I was elated to discover that we were grouped by educational level. I would therefore land with the younger kids, all the better.
In my car, there was an equal split, four boys and four girls. Within seconds everyone knew in what grade the others were, the towns in which they lived, whether they were travelling to England for the first time, the usual small talk. Although they were of the same age, thirteen, fourteen, the girls looked vastly older and more mature, which was not a discovery in itself, but little ominous for the weeks ahead. They patently ignored the boys that we were and quickly embarked on debates on French poets of the Eighteenth Century, which can be a fascinating topic under other circumstances.
I let my mind, as always, leering off and on, well, more often on than off, to be truthful, on the girls’ legs and the bulges stretching their T-shirts, wondering how long I would have to wait before one of these divine creatures, anywhere in the world, finally decides to allow me to Catch a Glimpse of Eternity… By the lack of response to my would-be Humphrey Bogart glances, I suspected that none of the young ladies travelling in the same car would bestow this long awaited and hopefully deserved honour upon me…
The train was approaching Boulogne. The boys had mainly compared the merits of various football teams, a sport that has always given me urticaria. The ladies had majestically ignored the presence of four pimpled adolescents and I could not wait to arrive. The schedule was two hours class in the morning, then lunch with our families, the afternoons would be free, except for a few day-outs to London, Canterbury and various Kentish castles. Dinner would be taken in our host families and the evenings would see an invasion of little French people, thirsting for fun…
I was wondering what sort of welcome we could expect. Older (male) friends had been to Brighton, Bromley and Margate, with the avowed purpose of losing their virginity and most of them had succeeded (or so they had said).
On the other hand, some had said that seeing a poster reading ‘forbidden to dogs and French’ on the windows of record shops was not uncommon. Not surprisingly so, I was soon to understand why.
