2 - In Love!

But, you are bound to ask, since I'm French, why the distinctly English surname? Well, you may already have guessed: I married an English guy. It is a well-known fact that whenever a  French young woman goes and live abroad for any length of time, there is a high likelihood of that happening. We might think we can pride ourselves on being especially attractive to foreigners, and that might occasionally be the case, but I tend to think that it is more likely to be the result of the worldwide reputation of the French for a libertine penchant, or should we say loose morals. (Where did that come from? I blame  Montmartre and the Folies Bergères but, no doubt, the origins of that cliché are much older). Foreigners may feel especially curious to find out about our supposed 'know-how' in the field and the truth is that, at the end of the day, quite a few get hooked.
I'm not saying that this is what happened in my case. I was an exchange-student, away from home for a whole academic year, for the first time in my life. I was part of an exchange of students between my home university of Toulouse and the English university of Bradford in West Yorkshire.  I was twenty years old and eager to 'have fun'; well, in a word, I wanted to get myself a boyfriend, which was what everyone else my age seemed to be doing but which I had, purposefully I told myself, avoided until then in case it got in the way of my studies. His nationality was immaterial to me; all that mattered was the extent of my attraction to him.
In the first few months I spent at Bradford university, I was hopelessly in love with two young men in turn. One was the French “lecteur” - each language department employed a native French speaker, usually a student, to improve the oral skills of its English students and those employed in that capacity are called “lecteurs” or “lectrices”. He was a few years older than me, a dark-haired Breton who had two passions in his life: Brittany and red wine, and who spent most of his time proselytizing about la culture bretonne. For his sake, I pretended to be (although, at the time I might have convinced myself that indeed I was) fascinated by anything to do with Brittany and I used to listen, an enraptured look in my eyes, to him rambling on for hours about the intricacies of Breton history and the absolute uniqueness of Breton culture which was  being victimized and oppressed by the French state. It strikes me now, looking back, that he was as passionate and single-minded about the independence of Brittany as many Scots or Catalans are today about the independence of Scotland or Catalonia, but his obsession did not lead to the major changes he was hoping for. Even if General De Gaulle had once shouted, to everybody's amazed ears, “Vive le Québec libre !”, no head of state has ever shouted “Vive la Bretagne libre !”. Anyway, or “anyroads” as Yorkshire folks would say, let's go back to the matter in hand: my attraction to this French-Breton young man. I soon realized that with him I was wasting my time and that my longing would never be reciprocated. The other boy I felt attracted to, was a blond-haired, pale-faced, sickly-looking German boy. His shyness which appeared as a kind of aloofness held a certain appeal for me at the time; he reminded me of a present-day Werther. Although I have to admit I can no longer recall what triggered my fascination for him. But that infatuation also proved to be a dead end.
All the while, you must be thinking: “but what about English young men?” After all I was in England to get to know the English, wasn't I? Admittedly, they were courteous and friendly, but kept their distance at the same time. As I came to understand it later, learning a foreign language really enhances one's interest in the countries where that language is spoken and also in the native speakers of that foreign tongue. And, already at that time, few English students were learning any foreign language. Therefore they were so engrossed in their busy lives, with involvements in all sorts of groups and activities, without mentioning the workload, which to be honest mustn't have been that heavy given the amount of time spent in pubs most nights, that they could not afford to divert their attention towards the few shy and awkward continental students who did not speak English with the ease and fluency they were accustomed to. In a word, for the first few months, my contacts with my English fellow-students were limited to occasional botched attempts at conversation. On one such occasion, I remember finding myself one morning waiting for the lift in the hall of the university main building, standing next to a very tall ginger-haired student in my year. We smiled at each other and he came out with an utterance which sounded like a grunt and from which I could not distinguish any recognizable word, although I had guessed it was a question since he was looking at me in an expectant way. I was a little embarrassed and asked him politely to repeat what he had just said, which he did. Alas, the message was not any clearer to me the second time. The situation was beginning to appear ridiculous to me, so I felt bashful and remained voiceless an instant, the smile dying on my lips. At that point, he seemed to open his mouth for the first time and he articulated clearly, separating each word: “how are things?”. So that was the question! I was so chuffed I had at last understood him that I chatted away in reply. No doubt he had not been anxious to find out so much about my welfare. I don't even remember talking to him again.
The situation changed dramatically only three months before I was due to head back to France. It might have been linked to my English having markedly improved by then. One day, just after the Easter break, I bumped into a new student, by “new” I mean a student just back from his year abroad. He immediately stood out, but not in the way you might imagine. He had a large, sturdy frame and there was something clumsy about him. His features were regular but coarse, not dainty like those of many English young men and he walked about with, on his face, a permanent grin which managed to exude no real happiness. It was half friendly, half cocky. Last detail in my character assassination, there seemed to be a deliberate attempt at bad taste in his outward appearance. Being so badly dressed seemed impossible unless one wanted to make a statement or prove a point, even taking into account that, already in those days -what it must be like today does not bear thinking about- a lot of students were skint. While registering his presence and taking in all the different aspects of his striking appearance, I was thinking to myself: “here's someone I shall never fancy!”. Reader, you may already have guessed: this intriguing, unlikely individual was to become, years later, my husband. His name, I soon came to find out, was Anthony Lewis.
I am not going to bore you with the details of how, only a few weeks after he introduced himself to me, very casually, in an overcrowded corridor between lecture rooms: “Hi, I'm Tony, I hear you're from Toulouse. I've just come back from there. Not my favorite place, Spain was so much better. I'll tell you about it some time....”, I ended up falling into his arms, which, needless to say, had not been my intention and which, thus, must have been the result of some scheming on his part. Funny how I never thought of finding this out. For a long time, I must have assumed that we were pushed into having supper together in a dingy curryhouse followed by his offering to come and share a herbal tea in my room, just out of sheer chance, through a kind of accidental fate. However it came about, the truth is that, after our first night together, my vision had become impaired and all the odd details and quirks which had made me twinge when I had seen him for the first time were changed into indearing features. Yes, reader, I had fallen in love!
Anthony Lewis, Tony as all his friends called him -only his parents called him Anthony- could be a charmer, especially with the ladies. He had the charm of a child in a man's body. A young man behaving at times like a young boy. It was refreshing.... at first. Many years later, when my eyes would no longer be filled with the distorting rays of love, he would just appear exasperating and unpredictable. But before that happened, several years were spent hopping from one exciting moment to the next.