And what of the other participants in the story? Anne Veil still practises law with her devastating, cool expertise. Christiane Besse is still my close friend and my translator. More surprisingly, perhaps, Editions André Balland continues to exist, flourishing in its modest way, publishing fiction and non-fiction from its offices in the rue St André des Arts on the Left Bank in Paris. For my part, all my novels and short story collections are in print in France, and selling well, including the three books I published all those years ago with Balland, all the books with my current and highly estimable publishers Le Seuil. As for André Balland himself, he’s abandoned the profession of publisher to become a novelist, and he’s found himself — wise man — a good and reliable maison d’édition—which happens to be the same as mine, in fact, Le Seuil. One of these days, I’m sure, I’ll bump in to him in the lobby of the old house on the rue Jacob where the Le Seuil offices are and we’ll shake hands, shrug our shoulders resignedly, exchange pleasantries and go our separate ways. But — I will know that I won.
2001
Anglo/Franco
A Personal A-Z
A. Avant-Propos
A few facts: I am a Scot who was born and raised in West Africa. I went to school and university in Scotland. I first visited France in 1969 when I was seventeen. I studied at the University of Nice for an academic year in 1971. I moved to live in England (in Oxford) in 1975. I moved from there to live in London in 1983. In 1991 my wife and I bought a house in south-west France. We still live in London and we still live in our house in south-west France. Everything that follows about these two alien countries that I have come to know fairly well over the past few decades is irreducibly, unapologetically, subjective and personal. It seems to me that this is the only way to encompass such a monolithic and multifac-eted subject as the nature of the relationship between two nations. Generalizations about countries and their peoples are usually specious, tendentious or blandly stereotypical. The only observations of value are those that arise out of personal experience and since everyone’s experience is different it strikes me as best to present such observations as randomly as they come, but marshalled under some kind of overriding modus operandi — such as an alphabet. Out of such apparent haphazard-ness some sort of understanding, something meaningful — and possibly harmonious with others’ experiences — may emerge.
B. Brasseries and Bistros
In a nearby village close to our house in France there used to be a perfect bistro. It was called the “Café de France” and everything in it — the bar, the seats, the billiard table, the radio, the decor — was from the 1930s. Going in there for a drink or a meal was a form of time-travel. Then two years ago the owners retired, the cafe was sold and the dead hand of modernization took over. And so now we never go there: all the old furniture was thrown out — the old zinc bar too — and the place was smartened up and made more efficient. And in the process something valuable — a little emblem of France and Frenchness — was destroyed. I search constantly for the perfect brasserie and bistro in France and I have to say they are becoming very hard to find. Paradoxically, such establishments are more common in British cities, where you can find fashionably retro versions of a typical brasserie du coin. They are lovingly recreated but they inevitably remain ersatz and inauthentic. But they are intriguing symbols, nonetheless: a British version of une vie française that lives on in our dreams.
C. Camus
Is Albert Camus the most famous French writer in the United Kingdom? I think it very likely — though he is run a close second by Gustave Flaubert. The reason is, I think, that almost everyone studies L’Etranger at school and the novel continues to haunt its readers long after the need to study it has gone. It remains enduringly modern in spirit. As does its author. Camus seems a prototypical French writer: handsome, engagé, moody, intellectual, sexy. And he liked football. Of course, like all those who die young his image is fixed in time, unchangingly. A friend of mine used to see him at parties at Gallimard in the 1950s—“always surrounded by pretty girls.”
D. Dordogne
When people ask me where I live in France I always hesitate to say “the Dordogne” because I realize it is so associated with the British. In fact I know hardly any British people in the area — almost all our friends and neighbours are French. But at the same time I am very conscious that this part of France has a powerful and curious draw for my fellow countrymen and women. I love it as much as they do, I suspect, but why do I not want to be too closely associated with these new colonialists?
E. Eurostar
There are, reputedly, some 200,000 French people living in and around London and the Eurostar link brings tens of thousands more each weekend. Sometimes when I walk up the King’s Road in Chelsea, where I live, I hear nothing but French voices. My impression is that the French love London and indeed that “London” represents “Britain” for most of them: they do not voyage further afield. This is not true the other way round. The British range throughout France, many of them choosing to avoid Paris.
F. France
There is an idea of France that exists in the minds of the British that is a fantasy. It is impossible for any country to live up to an ideal that is so persistent and so prevalent. No doubt there is an equivalent French fantasy about the British. Le style anglais, for example, is a very French concept. Or let’s say a very French evaluation of a form of unreflective Englishness. I have a French friend who dresses in a way he imagines is appropriate for an English gentleman — tweed jacket, striped tie, brogues, a certain type of haircut. In fact he looks very elegant and completely French — not remotely like an English gentleman.
But the British dream of France is more complex and I think more profound. It’s not just a question of attitudes, values and fashion styles. It is this dream of France that sends the British there year after year, decade after decade. At its essence, I feel sure, is the conviction that, of all the countries on earth, the French have solved the problem of the quality of life, of how to live well.