This strange little adventure, my very own Brief Encounter, probably belongs to my 20th year.
I was a little low in spirits as the train whistled and clanked out of the Gare du Lyon that summer day. I had cried all the way to Folkestone after an argument with my parents. A chat in French to an old lady on the autocar had cheered me a little. At the station, an officer in the French Army saw me struggling with the train door and helped me in, gazing into my eyes with the automatic admiration of a Frenchman to anyone in a skirt. He closed the door carefully and saluted as the train drew away.
The corridor smelt of smoke and grime, of garlic and urine. The toilet shocked me, a naive English girl travelling on my own, but the tiny incident had thrilled me. ‘What an adventure I’m on,’ I thought, ‘What a romantic adventure!’
The train was full of French soldiers. They looked so young; younger even than me. Did they have National Service like us, I wondered.
I don’t even recall what the argument with Mummy and Daddy had been about. I remember I wiped my eyes and turned resolutely to look out of the window. Perhaps my tears had been noted; perhaps it was a common opening gambit. One of the young soldiers was addressing me.
“You are sad, Mademoiselle?” he queried in French.
I looked at him. Soulful brown eyes, olive complexion, short black hair. About my own height, or a little more.
“No, not really,” I said, also in French, and smiled, “I’m alright, thank you.”
Of course we continued to talk; it was a successful gambit. As the hours passed we chatted endlessly, sharing biscuits and mugs of weak Belgian beer. It occurred to me that my schoolgirl French was more than adequate. He was a simple country boy and we would not be discussing Sartre and the French Impressionists.
I didn’t care. Live for the moment would be my guide. ‘Vive le moment!’ No, of course that would translate back as ‘Long live the moment!’ Well, perhaps that was even better.
For a while we slept, heads on each other’s shoulders, my hair across his cheek. It was a very trusting thing, and as we woke I smiled at him and he kissed me, briefly, awkwardly. The train was coming into the Gare du Marseilles.
“I’m going back to camp,” he told me, “It’s at Frejus, not very far from here.”
“I’m going to stay with my… what do you call it? My Parain, my Godfather. He lives nearby too,” I replied.
I had hardly ever met my Godfather, Cyril, and his wife Margaret before. Cyril had been a British Consul and they had lived mostly abroad. They had recently retired to live on the Riviera and it was wonderful to be invited to stay for a fortnight of my summer holidays. My soldier boy was Jean-Paul. I can no longer recall anything else about him, not even his surname.
“Please, please,” he insisted as we parted in the clattering smoke of Marseilles station. “Here is my address and number. Please come and see me. I love you!”
Well, against all expectations, I visited him. Where my parents would have called caution and envisaged horrid things relating to the white slave trade – that is, after all, the role and responsibility of parents – my Godfather just laughed and looked up the bus times.
So, one hot, lavender-scented afternoon I went down to Frejus. When I found the camp, I realised what an impossible, ridiculous thing I was doing. There was a gate and a guardhouse but the place was huge and inside the fence, I could see rows and rows of huts stretching into the distance and hordes of indistinguishable young soldiers. I learned later that there were 3,000 of them in the camp. I had my piece of paper with Jean Paul’s name and army number, but there was no way, no possible way in all the world, that I could go up to that guardhouse and ask for him. Defeated, I turned away. Coming past me, towards the camp, was a young soldier.
“Excuse me,” I said to him, “I have come to see this man.”
I showed him the paper.
“Jean-Paul…?” he said, “He’s a friend of mine; in my group. I’ll get him for you.”
An astonished and ecstatic Jean-Paul turned up within the half-hour. What young man would not be thrilled at so romantic a gesture? All that sun-drenched afternoon we wandered the dunes hand in hand. For years, I could not smell pines without being swept by the dreamy eroticism of young romance.
No, we did not carry it through to anything more than tender youthful kisses. Those were more innocent times and I suspect he was as virginal as myself. We were both in love, not with each other, but with our dreams and ourselves. He returned to camp after seeing me gallantly onto my bus and buying the ticket.
For a few months we corresponded, but it flickered out fairly soon. Jean-Paul told me that on his return to camp he was in huge trouble as he was supposed to have been on duty. He didn’t say whether our stolen, golden time was worth his spell in the camp lock-up.
But maybe, just maybe, at this very minute, far away a portly French gentleman is putting a little footnote in his memoirs. He is recalling a young English girl who sought him out one pine-smelling, sunflower-glorious summer afternoon. He is heaving a sentimental sigh and forgetting the punishment for taking French Leave.*
* I find that not everyone now is familiar with the colloquial use of the term French Leave: it was the custom (in the 18th century prevalent in France and sometimes imitated in England) of going away from a reception, etc. without taking leave of the host or hostess. Hence, jocularly, to take French Leave is to go away, or do anything, without permission or notice.