Not every day from this eventful trip remains lodged in the memory full-formed, for indeed no memories work that way. The whole trip is formed of a set of mental snapshots that represent something-or-other, that float, separating and then coalescing again as the mind seeks shape and order, a narrative arc on which to hang the pictures left dangling from the sights, sounds and smells associated with that time.
So some snapshots remains more tangentially connected; less relevant to my journey from loneliness to acceptance but nevertheless memorable.
A conversation with a few other young people, I think mostly young men, if I remember rightly – it might have been the Sunday afternoon after church – turned to matters to make one blush and one’s neckline get itchy from sweat; but mostly it was to do with what was permissible as a Christian, and I found myself surprised at some liberality in the views of one of them (not my new friend Jonathan, I am glad to say), preferring to take a more conservative line myself. I think I managed to express my views, despite being a usually shy and reserved person.
Speaking of conversations, another memory is of Nadine, the talkative English girl, older than me, with whom, awkwardly, I sort of had to share a room, though divided by a curtain. This fabric divider was no deterrent for her loose and liberal tongue, ready at the slightest sound of movement from me first thing in the morning to launch into a barrage of How-are-yous and I-can’t-believe-the-French-reallys and Do-you-know-so-and-sos and all the rest of it, a disembodied voice floating through the half-light while I struggled to come around and get used to where I was. Talking as we wound our way up some chipped staircase to an upper kitchenette with a balcony that overlooked the village, from where we could smell the fresh bread at the bakery, joining the happy middle-aged couple for breakfast, and all the while still the chatter, like a steady English rain. Once or twice she may have divulged a self-conscious remark or two about her habit.
I also mentioned church on the Sunday. Mick played a trombone, and I did my best to muddle through the French lyrics that appeared from the acetate slides projected from the old light-and-mirrors contraption at the front. I don’t know that I recognised any of the songs as translations from the English, but one or two of them might have been. I had to endure the most pecks-on-the-cheek at church. Greet one another with a holy kiss, and all that. Mick introduced me to everyone and told them the thing I’d told him in strictest confidence, that I thought I might write a symphony about the Corbieres mountains. I coloured up at the mention. (And I never did write a symphony, though I tried a few times.)
I remember a beat up Transit van, more beat up than the brown Volvo, no doubt beat up because it was taken every day over pothole and rocks and sudden drops and uneven paths round the side of vineyards that hugged mountainsides and plunged into valleys. I and my bruised posterior experienced all of this.
I remember a sharp argument between Mick and another woman, another local vineyard owner who sometimes came to lend a hand, but who seems very contrary, always.
And through it all, an internal wrestling, the final fledgling of my wings as I got ready to fly the nest once and for all, a loneliness that may have been a separation anxiety of sorts, may have simultaneously been a grief-stricken relief, a tumult, after that long toxic relationship I had been in was now finally broken. A learning how to be alone but not lonely, how to find friendship in the unfamiliar, a reconciliation with the unknown, that it need not be feared.
I have made several aborted attempts at concluding this narrative. I sought a final vignette to post at the end of the series, to close the arc, to land the slightly self-absorbed reflections on growing up, leaving home, discovering a world outside your bubble. Perhaps the aeroplane journey home might have been a fitting metaphor then – a heavy gift case of wine nestled between my feet (itself symbolic of the weight I expected this metaphor to carry; in terms of meaning, and in terms of hand luggage, it was too much). Or I tried my hand at recreating a conversation with Mick on my final evening; I posted a rose-gold sunset melting over the mountains, a glass of rosé in our hands. Some of this may have been true. But more of it may have had to do with the shade of glasses I wore as I looked back through the mind’s eye.
The truth is that I wrestled to conclude this fleeting narrative because it is but a snapshot, re-composed in the mind’s eye through these passing memories, as I have said; but its narrative arc, really, has had to be artificially constructed, and is certainly not completed. I went off to university after this with, yes, fresh faith and new experience, but also a lot of youthful idealism, and many more branches yet to hop off, forests to find, flapping fledgling feathers, finally free of the nest. I would learn a lot more and err a lot more. In the mountains and vineyards of the south of France, I was still just a kid. There is little to conclude for such a youth. He has everything to learn and nothing he can assume.
Perhaps Mick might have told me that when we stood on the balcony, having our (semi-reconstructed) parting conversation. In a way I hope he didn’t just tell me; he is too wise for that, a man of the soil, the salt of the earth. He carries his wisdom in the creases on his hands. No such salt is tasteless enough to just tell someone what they ought to know. It is an entire discredit to the human mind to simply be told anything. Life is tasted in the living, and in order to lead others in the way we have gone, we must not merely tell them the way, we must show them the way. No wonder Jesus wasn’t so interested in telling the disciples what they wanted to hear as in showing them the Father. No wonder he so lambasted the Pharisees for telling, without lifting so much as a finger in doing.
So perhaps I merely observed Mick, and his family, and their entourage, filled with Swiss chatter and polite laughter and non-stop talking and flute-playing, and discovered familiarity within the strange, the alien in the everyday. A universal faith; a local expression entirely different to my own. Shared memories, yet unique experiences. I hope at the very least that I learned humility that day, and the simplicity of gratitude. In the midst of sun-drenched mountains, I hope I noticed the scars, the tears, the fears, and recognised that every Paradise has its predators, every Eden its enemies, slithering, scheming, sly.
When I sip a mouthful of Corbieres, as I occasionally do now and then – one of us will spot a bottle on the shelf at Lidl, and grab a bargain – I go back there. The memory is embedded in my tastebuds, on my palate, up the nose. Earthy; heavenly. I hear the southern French dialect, taste wood-smoked barbecue, feel the stony paths that wind through vineyards beneath my feet, and I give thanks.
Ben David Trigg 