around his tomb in silent salute and then made our way to the train that would take us south, our group preferring not to hitch its way there because it was deemed too risky by our parents. Welcome to the home of the existentialist French, where you live for the moment, once you’ve checked out it’s OK with mum and dad. Yes, things would have to change, for me at least; soon it would be time to cut loose.
France was liberating though, almost immediately. After a little more than a week’s stretching on the sun-baked sands I changed colour and became a different person. The heat also killed any appetite I might have had, it would have been from that time on that I took on the thin shape I have now, losing any normal appetite at least. And the rest of the boys? Well, I had taken them there, not that I had set myself up as expedition leader or chief fucking scoutmaster, but as the only one with any idea and any kind of will to see it through I became the travel coordinator, navigator and complaints department rolled into one. That would also soon change – I hadn’t sought this sudden elevation and I wasn’t cut out to be a consensus leader. Camping wasn’t really my bag either, truth be told, it was the lack of money and alternative options that had forced us under canvas. The site itself – Les Acacias – had been recommended by two Australian girls I’d befriended at Gare du Nord. They described it as the hang-out and rendezvous for the Riviera’s dispossessed, by which I took them to mean poor, but which just about described everyone when compared to the Cartier-garbed hommes and femmes hanging out in the yachts and restaurants of St Raph and the glitzy brand-new marina at Port-Fréjus. Millionaires, all of them, so it seemed. I’d never seen wealth like that before, the jewellery, sunglasses, white linen suits and limousines. Wealth worn and flaunted, to my open-mouthed wonder, though studiously ignored by the rest of the have-nots for whom the word ‘insouciant’ could have been especially devised. No, it was far, far away from the drab and rain-soaked quays at Greenock and Port Glasgow. It was hard to believe that the water that lapped these harbours of my youth was part of the same worldwide ocean. There was something that drew me to the sea in these places, even though I always felt as if on the outside of the people and activity that gathered around them; at home it had been almost by choice, here I wanted in, I wanted to belong to the crowd who had it all.
The Aussie girls had told me of the enlightened policy regarding campsite rents at Les Acacias, in that very few people actually paid them. You were meant to of course, the total due was added to on a daily basis, but most of the patrons tended to prefer a midnight exit through a hole in the hedge when their time was up. Strictly speaking then, it was those particular customers who were the enlightened ones, and with budgets being tight I intended to join them. Knowing this in advance, I had Paul give his passport number when we checked in. I wonder if he has ever had any comeback from our eventual abrupt departure? Perhaps, maybe many years later, he was arrested on arrival at EuroDisney with wife, in-laws and screaming kids because of this shameless plant. I hope he can forgive me for setting him up. The shit he found himself in.
Anyway, at the height of the season there would be over a hundred tents rigged up on the hissing summer lawns, one giant lattice weave of wires and ropes, zips and poles, all intolerable sweat-holes under the morning and afternoon sun, damp with cold condensation at night. I remember queuing for the toilet every morning behind some farting Belgian, and the smell of gas and cooking bacon bringing out a curious sensation of nausea and hunger at the same time. Everyone would congregate at the wash-houses to shower and shave, then you would wait in line for fresh rolls and croissant at the site shop, the same place you would buy your cheap white wine at the end of the day. All of this was achieved with a degree of harmony the United Nations would have been proud of; there was a huge cast of nationalities managing to get by, despite their different languages, colour of skin, and reasons for being there. I remember it as almost like being in a Benetton ad. After a day or so of witnessing the clear-out that would occur after breakfast, when an assortment of beat-up cars, creaking trucks and rusty buses would arrive to pick up the same people we had been behind in one queue or another, I realized that whilst there were some holidaymakers on site, they were in the minority, everyone else was working.
One of the pick-ups was a yellow Volkswagen dormobile, showing up every day, audible before it was visible, its bleating, rasping engine shivering and shuddering as it coughed its phlegm of exhaust into the fresh morning air. The driver was a stringy guy in a vest, cut-off jeans and sandals. Usually the same vest, cut-off jeans and sandals, but that’s the French way I suppose. He had dark eyes and heavy eyebrows, again the French way, like Charles Aznavour. I guessed he might have been in his late thirties, although he seemed cool about this, in fact, cool about everything. It came to pass that one fateful day he caught me looking at him; I would have been getting up to meet the guys for breakfast some way into our second week. When he saw me he motioned for me to hop in and join his crew in whatever it was they were leaving to do. A simple gesture was all he needed to convey what he needed to convey; a shrug and a dropping of the chin, cheeks puckered, a stabbing sweep of his arm towards the back of the van. Blink and you would have missed it, blink and the door to a new way of life remains shut. I didn’t miss it, nor what was meant by it, and in an instant we understood each other in a way that would have been impossible to communicate by him in his fractured English or me in the ‘plume de ma tante’ French that had recently been drilled into me at school but had proved – surprisingly – to be less than fucking useless when tried out on natives who didn’t behave in the beret-and-onions way the textbooks would have had us expect.
So what did the rapid fire mime mean? Well, firstly that there was some kind of scam going on, one that I was invited to join, probably at a low or lightweight level, and that this venture wasn’t likely to be one currently under investigation by Interpol – I wouldn’t be joining in an armed robbery or sophisticated international fraud. In fact, it would be simple enough to pick it up as I went along, as indeed the others who were packing into his Tardis-like vehicle had done before. Most importantly though, the gesture indicated he was reaching out to me, trusting me to come and try, and not to squeal or rip him off if I didn’t like it; I’m cool with you, the motion said, can you be cool with me? I took a look at the state of those clambering in – there didn’t seem to be much room left amongst the German chicks in bikinis, Parisian hipsters with their stubble and crew-cut hair, half-caste reggae-boys in Bermuda shorts. I turned to seek out Ian and Maurice who had been behind me at the check-out in the camp shop; they were outside juggling rolls, fruit and wallets as they counted out their change. I knew where I belonged and where I wanted to be. The rattling door was closing over as the rusty machine revved up. I smiled through the window and they held it long enough for me to squeeze in. The tin rocket took off. I was a passenger looking out on its convulsive spurt of fumes, wondering where it would take me.
It was dark when the Anne finally cast off, Captain Henry quarrelling with the customs men to the last over a set of barrels which he insisted were to be loaded empty. The tariff-keepers seemed dubious and threatened to stay and observe the procedure until it was completed. Martin would hear later that the captain had told them this would happen at daybreak and had thus persuaded them to depart from the scene. Sure enough, no sooner had they done so than another set of traders appeared, men who made quick work of filling the casks with French brandy. The anchor was raised the very moment they were done and the booty on board. Below deck in his quarters Martin listened to the grumblings over the captain’s apparent greed and his willingness to employ such deceit and subterfuge simply to avoid the ten per cent duty which should rightfully have been due on the outgoing goods. There were other complaints too; that the late loading had left the stacked cargo now out of balance, heaviest highest in the hold and not properly bound in the evening darkness below deck. What might this do to affect the ship’s stability in the open sea? These arguments would be aired over and over as the voyage progressed, and initially Martin would remain indifferent to them. In fact, he was almost reassured. Captain Henry had proved that he was an experienced mariner; his actions, although dishonest, were hardly those of a novice.
They did mean however that by the time the vessel began to move it was loaded to the full, every possible inch carrying provisions of one type or another. Martin found no space where the captain had directed him to lodge his books and duly stacked the volumes in the cabin, disobeying the earlier
