Village to Village

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Alister Kershaw. Village to Village

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

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For Solange

This sudden incomprehensible love affair might have been a little less mysterious if I had arrived in France with gooseflesh anticipations of romantic garrets and dangerous liaisons in them, the Latin Quarter and champagne at five francs a bottle, and artists’ studios—all the preposterous sentimental paraphernalia from absinthe to midinettes. But I had not included any of these notions in my meagre luggage, I had no preliminary yearnings towards the country. Rather the contrary. In Australia I had spent much of my time with a young woman who had visited France just before the war and had gone down with a bad attack of what someone called ‘French flu’. She babbled so fervently and persistently about France and Paris that she infected me with a perverse loathing for both.

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In the event, the only visitor I ever had was Pierre. Pierre was a taxidriver and I met him because he had entered a contest organised by some airline or other. The aim was to select the most typical representatives of various forms of transport—a London bus conductor, a Venetian gondolier, a Paris taxidriver. Pierre entered in the last of these categories.

One by one, candidates were brought before a jury and the same questions put to each. One question in particular was considered fundamental: ‘You are driving around in your cab and you are simultaneously hailed by a ravishing young woman and a poor old lady with two heavy suitcases. Which of the two would you take?’

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