The other morning at breakfast, I had a coughing-fit caused by muesli dust. If anything underlines the privileged middle-class life I lead it’s surely the notion of choking on (organic) muesli. It’s like admitting to people that my mum used to spank us kids when we got too much for her with a rolled-up copy of House & Garden. Perhaps I’d better explain the phenomenon quickly. Here's the thing (as they say), I was tipping the muesli into a big Kilner jar. With insufficient room for the entire contents of the bag, I tried to squeeze the air out before sealing the remains to keep the mites out – whereupon some residual dust went up my nose and down my trachea (or wherever), thus introducing dust into the lungs (presumably) and causing the spasms.
It’s just another part of the rich tapestry of life in the bucolic middle of nowhere. Like conversations with locals about mushrooms – the edible rather than the hallucinogenic variety. Recently, for example, on my way to the hustle and bustle of Martel market, I pulled up at Giselle’s barn to buy some eggs and whatever vegetables she had to sell at this late-season juncture, and found her chatting to his worship the mayor, who lives in the house opposite. I wished them both a cheery good morning and attempted to contribute some nugget to the conversation. Unfortunately, I score a D-minus mark and a note to see me after break, boy when it comes to fungi. It remains a mystery to me that people can get so fired up about the subject. At least it’s harmless, I guess, and doesn’t involving killing Mother Nature’s creatures.
My best friend missed out on such edifying matters during his recent visit here. Nevertheless, he saw enough – despite the miserable weather at the time – to pronounce that my life was good, to paraphrase Randy Newman: which felt like a benediction and made me proud, because My Man in Manhattan ostensibly leads such a rich cultural life in the city. Even so, Johnny Town Mouse always remembers the good times spent as a child at the farms of his uncles, one in county Fermanagh, the other near Portstewart on the north Antrim coast, during our time at school together in Belfast. He has lived in a basement apartment a short walk from Central Park West for even longer than I’ve lived in France, so respective visits to each other’s domain help to recharge the parts that other trips can’t reach.
He came bearing gifts including a conviction (the operative word) that Trump is toast. My friend is a deep thinker and extensive reader, so I took some heart from what he had to say, though still convinced that all the books in the world won’t halt the march of Fascism.
Talk is easy for us. We are both the responsible eldest child of four (two boys and two girls) and were born exactly six months apart. We both live surrounded by books and music, both love the same kind of films and no doubt both agree that Hejira is Joni Mitchell's finest album. We have lived remarkably parallel lives a long way apart since going our separate ways at the end of our school days.
Face-to-face talk is so much easier than talk on a phone. In my case, I think I was unwittingly traumatised by my friend Satpol during my time in primary school in north London. A tall Indian boy who wore his black hair in two pigtails seemingly fashioned into the two handles of a jug or a vase, he had a wart on the palm of his right hand, but I didn’t let it spoil our friendship. One evening he phoned me, and my mum handed me the big black Bakelite telephone receiver. I didn’t know what to do or say, and I think he was equally perplexed at the other end. It was almost like trying to converse with a heavy breather. I realise now, of course, that he was probably just feeling lonely and needed to connect.
My astrological twin and I have no such trouble. I’m more of a listener than a talker, but when Johnny Town Mouse is here, I can give as good as I get. I can pull out a record from the shelves or find a Corgi car in its original box or wax lyrical on the craftsmanship of a plastic cowboy wielding a lasso on horseback and know that my enthusiasm is both mutual and entirely comprehensible. For all the talk about aches and pains and the ageing process and what's going to happen to our records when we die, all the talk about our hopes for at least another two decades of active service and dreams of leaving a lasting legacy, either as a writer or a stinking-rich philanthropist, it was like being a kid again. It always is. We didn’t stop nattering from morn till night. The Good Wife looks upon it as having two husbands in one house.
Our only real point of divergence, probably due to our contrasting environments, is his propensity to sit up late into the night, sometimes delving deep into YouTube rabbit holes, while I like to retire to the ‘best place on earth’: bed. There comes a time when you have to switch off and shut down: like a TV set in the days before 24-hour schedules for addicts and night-owls.
Of course, I sat up late with him on the night of his departure. I’d found him an inexpensive ticket on the night train from St. Denis près Martel to Paris Austerlitz: a first class berth on a couchette that would allow him to sleep all the way, then find his leisurely stress-free way across town to Charles De Gaulle airport and thence direct to JFK, and all for less than a 50-euro note.
We sat up till after midnight listening to music and pouring over an old school magazine from our time together as teenagers with big dreams, reminiscing about pupils we had known and loved (or not). Neither of us featured in any of the photographs, since we were and are both serial non-joiners. He got a mention for his part in the Russian society, while I got one for earning a point for our House in the annual sports event. I suspect that even then our big dreams were tempered by a healthy dose of ironic self-awareness.
I took him down to the local station in plenty of time for the 12.50 train, still a bag of nerves after my wife’s experience with the same night train: cancellation, non-appearance of replacement bus, hasty trip to Brive to find what we would find. But no, this time there were others reassuringly waiting on the platform, and the train from Rodez rolled in on time. The two mice embraced warmly and my Man in Manhattan showed his ticket to one of the three controllers (one for each carriage) and got on board. Johnny Town Mouse was on his long, long way home, leaving the Country Mouse bereft.
But only temporarily. My life is good. This rural mouse has friends in the vicinity with whom he can walk in the woods and miss all the mushrooms, revel in the night sky, moan about French drivers and even spin a record or two, just as his urban equivalent can play poker with pals, go and see some jazz at the Village Vanguard or classical music at Carnegie Hall, and pop into the local thrift store for yet more books and music. Jealous, moi? Well, perhaps a little envious on occasions. But each to his own domain.
I heard from him later that morning. In true SNCF fashion, they’d double-booked his bed. When he opened the door of his couchette, he found a young woman occupying his berth. She, it transpired, had booked on the train leaving before midnight, while I had booked on the train after midnight. Two trains, yet one and the same. SNCF Connect disconnected. Being a polite and reasonable man, my twin didn’t take advantage of the situation, but merely excused himself and took an unoccupied bed.
I should have warned him – to approximate what the cop tells Jake Gittes in Chinatown, Forget it… it’s France. And thank God, because I wouldn’t want to leeve in Amereeka now. How long will my Man in Manhattan tolerate living under a sociopathic convicted felon as President, backed by his bully-boy storm-troopers who like to ride around in heavily armed pick-up trucks? Far from Trump being toast, I fear it’ll be the rest of us. I’d better keep the home fire burning for Johnny Town Mouse.
