Almost French (40 page)

Deciding to get married fills our hearts with anticipation and excitement for the future. It also makes us laugh in wonder about the past, at the chance quality of our encounter in Bucharest. How that summer holiday—what I once feared was a flash of madness—has turned into marriage. How we stuck it out, muddling through our cultural differences and misunderstandings. Those first months in France now seem a bit unreal. ‘I can’t believe I came to Paris to live with a man I barely knew!’ I exclaim to Frédéric, laughing but serious. ‘I mean no job, no friends—what was I thinking?’ But even back in those most uncertain of times it seems deep down we knew what we were doing. The same thing men and women have been doing forever. Following our hearts, not our heads.

The words of the Greek man I met on Samos island all those years ago were prescient, as it turns out. ‘
Once you leave your homeland nothing is ever the same
,’ he’d said. Thinking back to our conversation on that luminous day, it strikes me that if we met now we’d have so much more to say to each other. Back then, his dilemma about feeling Greek in Australia and Australian in Greece didn’t resonate with me. Now it does. Although our situations are very different (his wife was Greek like him whereas I’m living in France with a
Frenchman) his experiences now have meaning. His Australian-raised children teased him about his funny accent. If Frédéric and I have kids, they’ll probably tease me too. Before long they’ll be correcting my French—
le bouleau
,
la tondeuse à gazon
—and cringing with embarrassment at my mistakes in front of their friends.

Our decision to get married gives a new clarity to my life and future in Paris.
I might only ever be ‘almost’ French but France for now is home.
It is not just a matter of marrying the man I love, it is also a commitment to a new country. It deepens my sense of belonging. Silly though it may sound, it makes me feel that my place in this country is more legitimate. This is reinforced by the subtle but tangible shift in attitude towards me from Frédéric’s family. They are thrilled by the news and I realise they had probably all but given up hope on us. (My family is thrilled too, although being less traditional, all that mattered to my parents was that we were happy, married or not.) But in France it seems our impending wedding means we can at last be taken seriously as a couple. It’s as though a door, which had been ajar, has suddenly flung wide open. Soon after announcing our engagement we attend a family reunion, a lunch at Baincthun with those uncles and aunts whom I first met at the height of the nuclear tests furore. They congratulate us warmly, with deep sincerity and a few of them tell me in their eyes I am now a niece. I know that in northern France these ties are not taken lightly. ‘I would like to take this opportunity to welcome Sarah into the family,’ Frédéric’s father announced, tears in his eyes. ‘I am very proud.’

We decide we want a very low-key wedding. No churches, no long guest lists, no fuss, no headaches. We don’t want some big bash that will unite family and friends from both
hemispheres. The organisation involved is one deterrent. More importantly, though, we would rather a small, intimate celebration. Given that we live in Paris it makes sense to do the formalities here. Then in about six months time, we’ll celebrate properly in Sydney with my family and friends. Under French law, religion is separated from the state and civil wedding ceremonies are obligatory, performed at local town halls which in our case means the
mairie
of the 2nd
arrondissement
. Only Frédéric’s immediate family will attend, along with his cousin Gauthier, Alain’s lovely Belgian girlfriend, Toinon, and Alicia and her husband Rupert, who’ll be our witnesses. We plan to do it soon; there’s no reason to wait when there’s so little to organise.

But deciding to marry in France sends us hurtling back into space towards that familiar planet of paperwork where nothing is simple and straightforward. A blow-by-blow account of our difficulties with
l’administration française
would make for exceedingly dull reading and I will try to spare you the tedious details. In fact it was a battle with just one person—the
procureur
(magistrate) responsible for approving our
dossier
. Of course, dealing with the French bureaucracy is always terribly time consuming, I know that by now. You pray for an enlightened civil servant, one who doesn’t seek to make the procedure more complicated than it is already. This time we are unlucky.

It takes a couple of months to gather the forest of documents required to get married: medical certificates, blood test results, copies of our most recent telephone and gas bills, passports, and in my case
carte de séjour
and letters from both the Australian and American embassies. We also have to supply official copies of our birth certificates. Some of the documents are not allowed to be more than three months
old, others are allowed to be up to six, and the whole process seems to require the timing genius of a Parisian hostess putting on the perfect dinner party.

Eventually we’re given the go-ahead to get married from the magistrate’s office. We telephone Frédéric’s family and fix a date with the
mairie
. Then, incredibly, the following week in a crisp, pedantic letter the
procureur
informs us we don’t have permission. No apology is given for the about turn. Only the reason why approval has been finally denied. The copy of my birth certificate (which we’d waited two months for) was issued without an
apostille
.

‘A what?’ I ask the fellow at the town hall, my heart sinking. It sounds ominous.

‘
Apostille
, it’s an official stamp,’ he explains. Apparently I should have asked for it to be put on the document. He lowers his voice in sympathy. ‘It’s a pure formality. Other
procureurs
would not insist on it, but well, it’s just bad luck because this one is
très rigoureuse
.’

The infamous
apostille
arrives five weeks later and within a few days we are granted permission to marry. I don’t feel so much joy as relief. Not wanting to waste any more time, we set the date for Tuesday next week. One of the reasons for rushing is that my sister, Anna, will be in Paris then—she’s coming from Sydney for a two-week holiday. Her plane lands just four hours before our rendezvous at the
mairie.

Fortunately her flight is on time. Although I haven’t seen my sister for eighteen months, there’s no time to chat—just a quick shower and a strong coffee to counter her jetlag and then we have to go. I am thrilled she is here to share the day. It turns out to be fitting consolation for the administrative hassles which preceded it. Alicia had insisted I be chauffeur driven to the
mairie:
low key or not, she wasn’t letting our
official wedding day pass without a certain amount of ceremony. Brides must have a car, she declared. Fully nine months pregnant with her second child, she is as energetic and ebullient as ever. And so just before eleven, she calls outside our apartment to pick up Anna and me. Rupert has taken Frédéric out for a pre-wedding breakfast and they’re going to meet us at the
mairie
.

In the bright sunlight, my limousine shines like a new plastic toy. It’s not much bigger than one either. For the occasion, Alicia has taken her red Mini Cooper through the car wash and decorated it with huge pink bows to match my pink dress. Made by a talented Austrian designer friend, Berit, the handprinted fabric shimmers with tiny crystals and sequins. Alicia squeals in admiration at the sight of my shoes—high strappy things I can hardly walk in. Giggling, we squeeze inside: Alicia, her two-year-old daughter Lily, who is swathed in violet tulle for the occasion, Anna and I—and Maddie and Lou-Lou, naturally, who are both wearing pink ribbons too. (Yes, I suspect I’m now as mad as any of those mad
mesdames
with dogs that I meet on daily walks.) I have visions of having to deliver a baby along the way as we dart between the fabric delivery trucks in the Sentier’s labyrinth of one-way streets, but we make it to the
mairie
in only slightly more time than it would have taken to walk there. Maddie and Lou-Lou trot assuredly through the sliding glass doors past the prominent sticker declaring ‘No Dogs’.

Upstairs, the
salle des mariages
has an air of stately dignity. It has all the French hallmarks of ceremony—pompous portraits, chandeliers, gilded mirrors, handsome wood panelling, waxed parquet floors. Frédéric, Rupert and Gauthier are already there and so are Alain and Toinon. Grainy shafts of light fall through the long windows, streaking our happy
faces. The mayor won’t be long, someone tells us.

About half an hour later the mayor enters the room and we all rise. Wearing a shiny tricolour sash and flanked by two other men, he sits in front of us on a raised platform like a judge presiding over a courtroom. Except that he looks about eighteen. Slim and yes, very young-looking, Jacques Boutault, our Green party mayor, is the antithesis of the portly, pipe-smoking sort of character I’d expected for some reason (probably from watching too many French films).

Civil marriage ceremonies are often purely administrative but our informal mayor precedes the paperwork with a lovely expansive message which seems to come straight from the heart. ‘I am especially delighted to be conducting this wedding today,’ he says softly. ‘I understand the process hasn’t been easy’, his smile is sympathetic. ‘And I am especially glad to be marrying a couple of mixed nationality. Marriages like yours are the future of France—and indeed of the whole world.’ Frédéric squeezes my hand.

Five minutes later, after reading us various articles from the French civil code, the ceremony is over. Jacques Boutault hands us our
livret de famille
, a slim folder with an elegant blue cover. In France this document is more precious than a passport.

‘Don’t lose it; replacing it means a lot of paperwork,’ he jokes.

Frédéric explains, ‘It’s for recording details like the births of children; you’re always asked to present it.’

Opening it I’m stunned to see the headlined pages go up to
Huitième Enfant
. Eight children! They must be kidding. I’m thirty-four, for god’s sake. Laughing, I say there are quite enough pages.

The mayor congratulates us warmly and shakes my hand.

‘Do I call you Madame Venière?’

‘Turnbull,’ I quickly correct him. ‘I’m still Madame Turnbull.’

‘Ah yes, Anglo-Saxons like to keep their own names,’ he smiles.

‘Anglo-Saxon women are quite feminist,’ adds Frédéric, for the benefit of I don’t know who.

They both chuckle as though this is a rich joke. More surprisingly, I laugh too. Five years ago I would have wondered what the hell was so funny about keeping my own name. It would have irritated me, being earmarked as a Radical Anglo-Saxon Feminist for something so commonplace. But now I don’t feel as though I have to argue the point. The French are always laughing at what they consider Anglo-Saxon eccentricities.

Our group walks through the airy elegant arcade, Galerie Vivienne to Palais Royal, where we’ve booked a table for lunch at a restaurant on the edge of the gardens. First though, we want to open the champagne we’ve brought with us. By now it has turned into a really hot day—it must be at least thirty—and so we pull up chairs beneath the cool canopy of the sculpted lime trees. The scene is beautiful: the flower beds are radiant, a paint box of colour. It seems to me entirely appropriate to be celebrating in this most romantic of gardens where Frédéric and I have spent many lovely hours. We’ve just filled the plastic flutes with bubbles when a young guardian approaches. Uh oh, trouble.

‘Dogs are strictly forbidden in the gardens,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry but you’ll have to leave.’

‘We just got married,’ I plead.

‘You can’t kick them out, they’re bridesmaids,’ quips Frédéric. The guardian looks at Maddie and Lou-Lou. They
stare brazenly back, oblivious to how ridiculous they look in their pink ribbons. The guardian allows himself a smile. ‘Try to be discreet then. And congratulations.’

Now, as I sit in my office surrounded by the coffee cups and papers which have accumulated alarmingly in the writing of this book, thinking back to that encounter with the guardian makes me smile. If my love for Paris lies in the sum of little moments, then the day Frédéric and I married shines in my memory with scenes of touching Frenchness. The mayor’s gentle message of openness, the way the guardian turned a blind eye with a smile and a kind word. It is moments like this that give meaning to the difficulties with the
procureur
—and to the thousands of other difficulties and challenges I’ve experienced here. The meaning is France itself, with all its paradoxes, its brusque aloofness and soulful warmth, its inwardness and outwardness, its paperwork and poetry, its power to fascinate and frustrate, to inspire love and anger.

That’s how it seems to me now.

I stare out my office window at the shimmering rooftops and my precious patch of ever-changing sky with a strange sense of something having ended.
The adventure
. Because that’s what it has been, this whole process of coming to live with Frédéric and making France my home. Not that every day has been an adrenaline rush, definitely not. It hasn’t been a summit-scaling dash but rather a slow ascent. Sitting here, I am struck by another thought which stems from the knowledge that life is a chronology of different chapters.