Читать книгу Seeing Things - Oliver Postgate - Страница 19

For me the spring of 1938 was full of excitement; I had been promised a brand-new full-size bike for my birthday. I had pored over the coloured catalogue of bicycles for hours and, with the expert advice of John and his friends, had eventually chosen a green Raleigh with half-drop handlebars, cable brakes and a Sturmey-Archer three-speed gear. It was priced at £5 19s 6d.

This was quite a large sum of money for Ray and Daisy to fork out but it was all part of a Grand Plan which they were hatching. We were to undertake a valedictory tour of France, on bicycles. Even for Ray and Daisy, this was an enterprising idea. They were not in the bloom of youth. Ray was ponderous and overweight. Daisy was in her late forties and rheumaticky. Neither of them was in the habit of taking exercise and neither of them had been on a bicycle for decades. But, with the war-clouds looming, they both felt that this might be the last time they would see their beloved France.

That was one serious reason for the trip. The other was that the franc stood at 1,750 to the pound, a rate of exchange that was not so much advantageous as mythically bountiful. A practical difficulty arose from the fact that our parents were very short of money at the time. Although once we had got to France the living would be very cheap, getting there was going to be expensive. So, obviously, bicycles were the logical choice.

Bicycles were obtained, saddlebags and panniers were bought. Our cousin, Peter Thurtle, and his wife-to-be, Kitty, joined the project and Daisy made divided skirts with box-pleats for her and Kitty to wear. Ray enrolled us all in the Cyclists’ Touring Club.

The start of the tour proper was a triumph worthy of Jacques Tati. We left the small hotel in La Ferte´ Alais, just south of Paris, and proceeded ‘en crocodile’ along a quiet wide road. At the edge of the town we came over a gentle hill and rolled down to a roundabout.

Ray, in the lead, put out his arm to signal his intent and rode steadily round the roundabout, to the left. John, knowing better, put his other arm out and rode steadily round it, to the right. I, confused, swung round and rode back towards the others, seeking instructions, but in vain. Kitty followed Ray to the left. Peter followed John to the right. Daisy jumped off and pushed her bike across the middle of the roundabout, shouting. I rode across behind her. The gendarme, his Gauloise hanging from his lip, stood with his hands on his hips observing the spectacle, but in the end chose not to comment.

That holiday has left me with the most glorious pictures. We rode along a set of stone bridges across a wide-spread river and in through the gates of a medieval town. Everything – the sun, the sky, the glittering of the leaves in the lines of trees, the lazy flat river rippling gently over gravel – was part of a fairy tale. Every roof, every dark shadow, every patch of sun-warmed stone in that town was full of glory and magic. I was drunk with amazement and delight and that night, when I went to bed filled with excellent dinner, I wished with all my heart that I could take the feeling of that place with me for the rest of my life.

A few years later I came across the work of Alfred Sisley. He too had seen Moret-sur-Loing and had spent much of his life painting the very scenes that I had taken in that day. When I saw his paintings I jumped for joy, not so much because they were great paintings but because, for me, they were like a magic snapshot album – each painting filled to overflowing with the light and essence of places that I had already seen and loved. In fact I found out later that the whole of that holiday was being painted by the Impressionist and Post-impressionist schools. We rode along the towpaths of canals under the poplar trees and passed slow barges with washing on their lines, gently turning over the brown water as a plough turns soft earth. Camille Pissarro must have been there with his easel. The long straight Roman roads were lined with stalky plane trees leaving dabs of shadow for us to ride through, singing at the tops of our voices as the warm wind blew in our hair. There must have been half a dozen painters there. But I, being pig-ignorant, knew nothing of art. I was scooping in, through my eyes, ears and nose, the impressions that those great painters had immortalized, but I was taking them in neat, for the first time, just as they must once have done.

For John and me the riding was easy. We were both experienced cyclists, light and wiry. Each morning our bicycles were like young horses, circling the yard, eager to be away on the road. We developed a habit of whizzing on ahead, leaving the others to trundle after us at their own speed. Then we would stop at a wayside estaminet, order vin rouge-grenadine a ‘l’eau de selz, and wait for the elders to catch up and pay the bill, which would only be about five francs. They couldn’t very well refuse such a small sum and the slight tint of rosy inebriation that was my happy condition on those mornings was soon burned away in leg-work.

Lunch was bought – a long loaf, some pâté, tomatoes, cheese, wine and water – in a village, and eaten, with the bottles chilling in the shallows and the toes fingering cool sand, on the green bank of some shady stream.

Towards evening we would come to the designated town. There John and I would drop back, leaving Ray, riding slow and high on his high, slow bicycle, to make his entrance and sniff the atmosphere, but circumspectly, as at dusk a bull elephant approaches a waterhole, leaving the herd to await his signal to follow.

Ray would come to a hotel and heave to outside it. The herd would follow and an important discussion about price and suitability would ensue. At St-Valerien, madame of the hotel came out to greet us. She spoke most highly of her establishment and intimated that if we were to take dinner as well as bed and breakfast all would be felicitous and of good price. The herd acquiesced and madame led us in, shouting orders as she did so to bring the dormant hotel to life. Small children with baskets, on foot and on bicycles, were despatched to the shops. A boiler was lit, bags were unpacked, baths were taken, and after a short cool stroll through the village we came back to find, not just dinner but a proper menu with choices. Later, the sheets were coarse but clean and I slept, as always in those times, still as a stone angel.

Waking up in a French village was always the same and always surprising. The sun would be up first, trying to find a way in through the shutters. It would reflect blurred green and gold stripes on to the ceiling, which would move and change with the passing shadows. Then, as if by a signal, somebody outside would drop a bucket, clang, on to the stones. A door would creak, a chain rattle, and then a shrill voice would let fly with a short complicated yell which would echo among the resonant walls. What was it, a greeting or an imprecation? Whatever it was it would be answered by more buckets being thrown and other voices from other directions giving answering yells until it seemed the whole town was out there, greeting the day.

That morning, after a French breakfast of croissants and hot chocolate we said goodbye to madame, and Ray paid the bill which, when converted, worked out at one and ninepence (9p) a head.

Ray, for all his atheism, was fascinated by churches. During the tour we must have seen and examined quite a number of them, but the one which has left the strongest impression with me was the Abbey at Ve´zelay. There the tops of the pillars and all the odd corners of the stonework are infested with carvings of ribald persons and unlikely creatures doing unexpected things. I noticed them and searched them out, wondering what they were up to, wondering indeed what religion was up to that it gave house-room to such manifestly disreputable denizens.

It soon became clear that we had not come to France for the architecture. Gradually, as we travelled westwards, I began to recognize the names of some of the towns and villages. I wondered why this was, and then I realized where I had seen them before – on the labels of wine bottles. Sleepy little towns like Nuits-St-Georges, Puligny-Montrachet, Volnay and Mersault were approached by Ray with the reverence of a pilgrim – which indeed he was, for in these places the nectar of the gods might still be found and taken. Here the vin maison was premier cru and the ‘good bottle’ of the evening was the stuff of dreams.

Although they had made the pilgrimage in a spirit of dread, fearing that the impending war might sweep it all away, Ray and Daisy were not so foolish as to allow the wine or food to be tainted with foreboding. It was a very happy time and I suspect that, if anything, the thought that he and Daisy and the rest of us might be mocking Providence simply added to Ray’s delight.