Cross Channel

  He had first travelled to France fifty-six years previously, on a family motoring holiday to Normandy. No roll-on, roll-off ferries then, no Eurostar or Le Shuttle. They anchored your car to a wooden pallet on the Newhaven quayside and swung it into the depths of the ship as if it were a piece of merchandise. This habitual memory set off in him the catechism of departure. He had sailed from Dover, Folkestone, Newhaven, Southampton, Portsmouth. He had landed at Calais, Boulogne, Dieppe, Le Havre, Cherbourg, Saint-Malo. He had flown from Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, London City Airport; landed at Le Bourget, Orly, Roissy. Back in the Sixties he had taken an overnight sleeper from Victoria to the Gare du Nord. At about the same time, there had been the Silver Arrow: four and a quarter hours from city centre to city centre had been the boast, Waterloo to Lydd, Lydd to Le Touquet, and the Paris train waiting by the airstrip. What else? He had flown from Southampton (Eastleigh, to be precise) to Cherbourg by something called an air-bridge, his dumpy Morris Minor in the hold of a lumbering freight-plane. He had landed at Montpellier, Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Nice, Perpignan, Nantes, Lille, Grenoble, Nancy, Strasbourg, Besançon. He had taken the motorail back from Narbonne, Avignon, Brive-la-Gaillarde, Fréjus and Perpignan. He had flown over that country, crossed it by train and bus, driven, hitch-hiked; he had raised broad-bean blisters walking through the Cévennes. He was the owner of several generations of yellow Michelin maps, whose slightest unfolding would stir him to vivid reverie. He still remembered his shock, forty or so years earlier, when the French had discovered the roundabout: bureaucracy meets libertarianism, that old French collision. Later they had discovered the speed-bump or sleeping policeman: the ralentisseur or policier couchant. Odd that our policemen slept and theirs merely lay down. What did that tell you?

  The Eurostar broke from the last London tunnel into the April sunlight. Embankment walls of bistre brick noisy with graffiti slowly yielded to mute suburbia. It was one of those brittle-bright mornings intended to deceive: housewives pegging out their laundry were mistakenly in short sleeves, and young men would get earache from lowering their car-roofs prematurely. Xeroxed semis fled past his eye; prunus blossom hung as heavy as fruit. There was a blur of allotments, then a sportsground with a row of cricket sightscreens parked for the winter. He shifted his gaze from the window and picked at the Times crossword. A few years previously, he had announced his plan to ward off senility: do the crossword every day and call yourself an old fart if you catch yourself behaving like one. Though wasn’t there something senile, or pre-senile, in these very precautions?

  He turned away from himself and began to speculate about his immediate neighbours. To his right were three fellows in suits plus a chap in a striped blazer; opposite him an elderly woman. Elderly: that’s to say, about the same age as himself. He said the word again, slid it around his mouth. He’d never much cared for it - there was something slimy and ingratiating about its use - and now that he was himself what the word denoted, he liked it even less. Young, middle-aged, elderly, old, dead: this was how life was conjugated. (No, life was a noun, so this was how life declined. Yes, that was better in any case, life declined. A third sense there too: life refused, life not fully grasped. ‘I see now that I have always been afraid of life,’ Flaubert had once conceded. Was this true of all writers? And was it, in any case, a necessary truth: in order to be a writer, you needed in some sense to decline life? Or: you were a writer to the extent that you declined life?) Where was he? Elderly. Yes, the fake gentility of that expression should go. Young, middle-aged, old, dead, that was how it went. He despised the way people pussy-footed about age - their own age - while happily thrusting it on others. Men in their mid-seventies referring to ‘some old boy of eighty’, women of sixty-five mentioning a ‘poor old dear’ of seventy. Better to err in the opposite direction. You were young up to thirty-five, middle-aged up to sixty, old thereafter. So, the woman opposite was not elderly but old, and he was old too: had been so for exactly nine years. Thanks to the medics, there was a lot of being old to look forward to. A lot of being as he now too often found himself: anecdotic, memorialist, rambly; still confident about the local connection between things but apprehensive about the overall structure. He was fond of quoting his wife’s formulation, arrived at long ago when they had both been middle-aged: ‘As we get older, we become hardened in our least acceptable characteristics.’ That was true; though even knowing it, how could we be saved from it? Our least acceptable characteristics were those most apparent to others, not to ourselves. And what were his? One of them was complacently asking himself unanswerable questions.

  He left the men till later. The woman: silverish hair which made no claim for authenticity (the colour, that is - the hair, as far as he could tell, was real), primrose silk shirt, navy jacket with primrose handkerchief in the pocket, plaid skirt which … no, he could no longer interpret hemlines in terms of fashionability, so didn’t try. She was tallish, five eight or nine, and good-looking. (He refused that other slimy word, handsome. When applied to a woman above a certain age, it meant ‘was once good-looking’. A harsh misapprehension, since beauty was something a woman grew into, usually in her thirties, and thereafter rarely grew out of. Brash, fuck-me innocence was something different. Beauty was a function of self-knowledge, plus knowledge of the world; therefore, logically, you would not be more than fragmentarily beautiful until you were thirty or so.) Why not a Crazy Horse girl? That would fit. She had the height, the bones, the grooming. Going back for a reunion: that’s what they did, didn’t they? Madame Olive’s class of ’65 or whatever. Odd that it was still going on, that despite the coarser sex-treats available there was still an audience for these hard-working English hoofers, matched like suburban semis, who danced what was held to be the tasteful erotic and weren’t allowed to meet anyone within 200 yards of the club. He swiftly imagined her previous life for her: ballet school in Camberley, dancing on cruise-ships, an audition at the Crazy Horse; then came a spangly Latin stage-name, professional life in a family atmosphere, the club savings scheme; finally, after four or five years, back to England with the down-payment on a dress shop, gentleman admirers, marriage, children. He checked the wedding ring, which was centrally placed between two more geological items. Yes, that was about right, returning for the fiftieth anniversary … Madame Olive long since gone, of course, but Betty from Falmouth would be there, and so would …

  The blazer of the fellow diagonally across from him was a bit bogus. Of course, all striped blazers were au fond bogus, pretending to be Jerome K. Jerome or Henley Regatta, but the ox-blood and lime elements in this one were approaching parody. A plump middle-aged chap with greying hair, sideburns and a noisy tan, yawning over a cycling magazine. Jack the Lad off for a spot of how’s-your-father? Too clichéd. TV executive bidding for the coverage of this year’s Tour de France? No, make a sideways jump. Antique dealer on the way to the Hôtel Drouot? Better. The jaunty jacket designed to supply a bit of false character, to help catch the auctioneer’s eye yet also make rivals underestimate him when the bidding got serious.

  Beyond the men in suits he saw an unstrung hop field and the half-cocked chimney of an oast-house. He pulled in his focus and tried to do the blokes justice. The one with glasses and a newspaper seemed to be examining the carriage window in some detail: all right, make him a civil engineer. The one without glasses but with a newspaper and a stripy institutional tie: third echelon of the European Commission? The other one … oh, count your prune stones: thinker, traitor, solderer, whaler … well, you couldn’t do everyone, he’d already found that out.

  In the old days — even in the elderly days — they might have been talking by this stage. The best you got nowadays was a sort of wary camaraderie. Stop. Old fart. That word nowadays is the giveaway, always preceding or following a statement worthy of denunciation by the absent, younger, critical self. As for the sentiment itself: you have been here before, don’t forget. When you were a boy, adults were always boring on about how ‘Everyone
had talked to one another during the war.’ And how had you reacted, becalmed in the throbbing boredom of adolescence? By muttering to yourself that war seemed a fairly high price to pay for this apparently desirable social result.

  Yes, but even so … He remembered … no, that verb, he increasingly found, was often inexact. He seemed to remember, or he retrospectively imagined, or he reconstructed, from films and books with the aid of a nostalgia as runny as old Camembert, a time when travellers crossing Europe by train would become acquaintances for the length of the journey. There would be incidents, sub-plots, exotic characters: the Lebanese businessman eating currants out of a small silver box, the mystery vamp with a sudden secret - that kind of thing. British reserve would be overcome with the help of squintily suspicious passport inspections and the tinkly bell of the white-jacketed steward; or you might thumb open your tortoiseshell cigarette case and make social disembarkation that way. Nowadays … yes, nowadays the journey was too swift across this new European zollverein, food was brought to you at your seats, and no one smoked. The Death of the Compartment Train and Its Effect Upon the Social Interaction of Travel.

  That was another sign of Old Fartery: thinking up wanly humorous thesis titles. Still … back in the early Nineties he had found himself in Zürich boarding an austere and unwelcoming train to Munich. The reason for its shabbiness soon became apparent: the final destination was Prague, and this was old Communist rolling-stock which had been graciously allowed to sully the impeccably capitalist track. In the window-seats were a tweeded Swiss couple, full of rugs, sandwiches and elderly suitcases (now that was all right, a suitcase could - even should - be elderly), which only a middle-aged Englishman was strong enough to heave into the rack. Opposite him sat a tall, blonde Swiss woman in scarlet jacket and black trousers, with a certain clunk of gold about her. Unreflectingly, he had gone back to his European edition of the Guardian. The train ambled bumpily over the first few kilometres, and each time it slowed the compartment door beside him would slide open with a bang. Then the train would pick up speed and the door hurtle itself shut with another uncushioned crack. One, two, or perhaps four silent curses were uttered every few minutes against some unknown Czech carriage designer. After a while the Swiss woman laid down her magazine, put on dark glasses and set her head back. The door banged a few more times, until the Englishman put his foot against it. He had to twist slightly to do so, and maintained this awkward, watchful posture for half an hour or so. His vigil had ended when a ticket collector rapped on the window with his metal punch (a sound he hadn’t heard for decades). She stirred, passed up her ticket, and when the official had gone, looked across and said,

  ‘Vous avez bloqué la porte, je crois.’

  ‘Oui. Avec mon pied,’ he had pedantically explained. And then, just as unnecessarily, ‘Vous dormiez.’

  ‘Grâce a vous.’

  They were passing a lake. Which one was that? he had asked. She didn’t know. Lake Constance, perhaps. She consulted the other couple in German. ‘Der Bodensee,’ she confirmed. ‘It was here that the only Swiss submarine sank because they left the door open.’

  ‘When was that?’ he asked.

  ‘It was a joke.’

  ‘Ah …’

  ‘Je vais manger. Vous m’accompagnerez?’

  ‘Bien sûr.’

  In the dining-car they were served by broad-hipped Czech nippies with tired faces and untreated hair. He had a Pils and a Prague omelette, she an unsightly mound of items topped off with a slice of beef, some bacon and a cruelly fried egg. His omelette seemed as delicious as this sudden situation. He had coffee, she a glass of hot water with a Winston Churchill tea-bag dangling in it. Another Pils, another tea, another coffee, a cigarette, as the soft south German countryside clattered past. They had disagreed about unhappiness. She said unhappiness came from the head, not from the heart, and was caused by the false images which arose in the head; he asserted, more pessimistically, more incurably, that unhappiness came solely from the heart. She called him Monsieur, and they addressed one another decorously as vous; he found the tension between this linguistic formality and the assumption of intimacy voluptuous. He had invited her to his lecture that night in Munich. She replied that she had been planning to return to Zürich. On the platform at Munich they had kissed on both cheeks, and he had said, ‘A ce soir, peut-être, sinon à un autre train, une autre ville …’ It had been a perfect flirtation, its perfection confirmed by the fact that she never came to his lecture.

  The Shuttle terminal at Cheriton slipped by; the train manager announced that they were approaching the Channel. Fences, unsullied concrete, an inappreciable descent, then suave blackness. He closed his eyes, and in the tunnel of memory heard the echo of rhythmic shouting. It must have been fifteen, twenty years ago. Perhaps that dubious fellow across the aisle had set it off by summoning up his analogue. People repeated themselves, as stories did.

  In the private darkness of his past, he turned and saw a group of football fans approach, beer can in hand, free fist aloft. ‘Dra-gons! Dra-gons!’ Black leather jackets, rings through their noses. Spotting grey-haired, comic-blazered Lenny Fulton, the smarmy yet opinionated presenter of ‘Sportsworld UK’. Lenny Fulton, ‘the man who likes to put himself about a bit’, who earlier that season had denounced the less civil supporters of a south London club as ‘worse than pigs’ - ‘indeed’, he had gone on, ‘to call them pigs would amount to a libel on that admirable beast.’ Those accused had responded with satiric accord. You call us pigs? Very well, then pigs we shall be. In their hundreds they had turned up to the next match with brass rings clipped to their noses; the more ardent had their septums pierced and turned a fashion statement into a permanent declaration. From the terraces they had loudly oinked their support. Now they had found their condemner.

  ‘Fucking Lenny! Look what we’ve got here!’ There was a blur of movement, an inchoate roar, a spray of beer and a panicky squeak of ‘Hey, lads’, before Lenny Fulton was ripped from his seat and frog-marched away.

  For ten minutes or so the other passengers looked around, mutually encouraging one another to do nothing. Then Fulton had reappeared with his guardians, who thrust him approximately back into his seat. He was dishevelled, red-faced, beer-haired and now wore a big brass clip-on ring through his nose.

  ‘Fucking lucky, eh, Lenny? Doors.’ One of the larger fans cuffed him across the face. ‘Wear it, right, Lenny?’

  ‘Right lads.’

  ‘All the way to fucking Paris. And on TV. Be watching you.’

  They turned to go, nose-rings glinting. On the back of their leather jackets were dragons’ wings picked out in scarlet stitching. Lenny Fulton looked around his immediate companions and laughed self-consciously. ‘Good lads, really. Just high spirits. It’s a big match. No, good lads.’ He paused, touched his nose-ring, laughed again, and added ‘Fucking animals.’ He ran his hands through his damp hair, back-combing it with his fingers until it stood up in a way familiar to viewers of ‘Sportsworld UK’. ‘If the doors weren’t locked they’d have had me out. Pigs.’ Then, with visible and melodramatic thoughtfulness, he appended the necessary qualification. ‘Pigs is too good for them. To call them pigs would amount to a libel on that admirable beast.’

  They had urged calm and normality back upon themselves with talk of sport: the match against Paris Saint-Germain, the winter cricket tour, the Five Nations Tournament. He joined in awkwardly, asking one of his favourite questions: ‘When was cricket last played at the Olympics, and who won the medals?’ Lenny Fulton looked at him with the sort of professional suspicion he obviously reserved for sports bores. ‘Trick one, by any chance?’ No one hazarded an answer. ‘1900, Los Angeles, England the gold, France the silver. No bronze as those were the only two countries competing.’ Only mild interest was expressed at this. Well, it had been more than a century ago. He didn’t bother with his second question: what was the spot prize the year the Tour de France had passed through Colombey-les-deux-Eglises? Give up?
All three volumes of General de Gaulle’s memoirs.

  When lunch arrived, the steward looked enquiringly at Lenny Fulton and murmured, ‘Up the Dragons, eh, Mr Fulton?’

  ‘Fuck the Dragons, actually, from here to Timbuctoo. And would you refresh this with a quadruple. Single malt, none of your blended rubbish.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Fulton.’

  Now, years later, the elderly Englishman unwrapped his sandwiches, took out his travelling corkscrew and opened the half-bottle of 2009 Meursault. He offered a glass to the Crazy Horse girl opposite. She hesitated, took the bottle, turned it to read the label, and then assented. ‘But just enough to taste.’

  No one drank any more, he reflected. Or at least, no one seemed to drink as he did, just a little more than was recommended. That was the best way to drink. It was either quadruple whiskies and a softened brain, or else mimsy little ‘tastes’ such as the one he was now pouring. He imagined her back in her spangly days curling a little finger as she hoisted the coupe de champagne ordered by some hot-tongued admirer she had met 201 yards from the club.

  But he was wrong. She wasn’t going to Paris and she had never danced except on amateur nights. She told him she was going to Rheims for a vertical tasting of Krug back to 1928. She was a Master of Wine, and after holding his Meursault against the white tablecloth and briefly rinsing her mouth she declared that for an off-vintage it had reasonable fruit, but you could taste the rain and the oaking was rather out of balance. He asked her to guess its price, and her estimate was lower than what he had paid for it.

  Well, a good misapprehension; not outstanding, but useful. His favourite was still Casablanca. Changing planes there on the way to Agadir some twenty years ago; scurrying through a sultry terminal, watching the boarding-lights begin to flash amid a loungeful of staid and stoic British travellers. Suddenly, a young woman had gone berserk and started upending her handbag all over the floor. Make-up stuff, tissues, keys, money fell out at their different speeds, and with a sort of manic defiance she continued hitting her bag long after it was empty. Then, very slowly, as if daring the plane to leave without her, she had started picking things up and putting them back. Her boyfriend remained stiffly in the queue while, furious yet unashamed, she rootled like a rag-picker.