French roundabouts & nervous passengers

Although I’d driven for years in Southern California traffic, the idea of driving in France filled me with all sorts of dread

But since I’d already decided I wasn’t going to drive, it didn’t really matter. And at first, it didn’t. Although I didn’t ride a bike everywhere as I’d envisioned, or even look for a second-hand bike, I did begin to master the buses — but that’s another story.

I also bought a red straw shopping basket, which made me feel very French, and bought groceries at the village epicerie which made me feel very non-French. That’s another story too.

Then an American friend in the village offered to lend me her car.

“The Intermarché is cheaper than the epicerie,” she said, “And while you’re there, maybe you could pick up some things for me.” She hated grocery shopping.

Too embarrassed to tell her about my fear of driving in France, I took the keys and found her car. Green Bean, she called it, was a small and battered van of a type familiar around French vineyards. Hers had lace curtains at the windows and there was a mattress in the back for camping when her teenage kids came to visit.

She’d warned that Green Bean could be a bit tricky.

She was right.

First off, I couldn’t put the damn thing into reverse. Grasping the stick shift, I wiggled it back and forth, applied pressure to it, rubbed and stroked it and wiggled it some more until the metal grew hot.

A passerby might have thought I had an erotic fixation.

Eventually, I got the hang of it, so to speak. Drove it to the Intermarche in the next town, got the groceries and made it safely home.

My earlier fears about driving in France seemed foolish.

Then my friend asked if I would mind driving Green Bean into Montpellier to buy some gourmet coffee that could only be purchased in some fancy boutique smack in the middle of the city. She was on a deadline or something. Use of Green Bean clearly came at a price. Still, I hesitated.

Driving to nearby places was one thing, but Montpellier was big and unfamiliar and if I had to ask for directions, I wasn’t sure how I’d manage in my less than fluent French.

“Ask Belle to go wth you,” my friend said. “She owes me a favor. I went to one of her damn dance recitals.”

Belle had frizzy red curls and, even at seventy-odd, a dancer’s lithe body. A one time Berkely hippy, she’d lived in France more than half her life and had some great stories. For years, she’d supported herself by picking grapes and, it was rumoured, prostitution, then she came into a little money. Now she adopted cats. Lots of cats, so many that she’d considered buying a derelict property to house them.

She struck me as bold and adventurous and scared of very little.

Until she sat in Green Bean’s passenger seat with me at the wheel.

On the thirty-minute drive to Montpellier, she applied imaginary brakes, screamed warnings, clutched at the dashboard, cringed, winced, shrieked and by the time we found the fancy coffee place had reduced us both to hysterical wrecks.

Heading home, Belle said she knew a different way. One she insisted was better than the autoroute which we’d taken earlier. I agreed, but forgot to ask whether there were roundabouts. I still didn’t like them.

There were.

In the middle of the first one, Green Bean’s passenger door flew open.

Belle screamed and slammed it shut.

Minutes later, it flew open again. I pulled over and we both took turns at slamming it shut. Belle kicked it hard. I fiddled with the lock and slammed. Belle fiddled and kicked. Green Bean’s door would not stay closed.

Belle said she would hold it closed, but warned me to drive very, very slowly. Then she warned me again. And again. Peering out of the window, muttering under her breath and screaming at me to slow down. All the while holding Green Bean’s door closed.

An hour passed as we crawled through one village after another while Belle peered at place names. After a while, all the villages began to look the same. I asked if we were lost. She said we weren’t.

Then we came to another roundabout. A bigger one. She couldn’t decide which exit we should take. “Keep going,” she said as we circled a second time.“No, not that one, keep going.

“Keep going. No. Keep going.”

“Belle I’m dizzy,” I said as we circled again. And again.

Belle complained that her arm was aching from holding the door closed so we decided to tie it shut with what we had at hand. Or what we could find in the back of Green Bean — a computer cord and a shawl.

Belle protested that the shawl was too pretty to use.

I threatened to wrap it around her neck.

We managed to tie the door shut from the outside and Belle climbed back in through the driver side, nearly impaling herself on the gear shift. Then, at her insistence, we tested the safety of the door by circling the rond-pont half a dozen times.

The door stayed closed and we arrived back in the village.

Belle went off to make dinner for her cats. I drank a lot of wine. I assume my friend enjoyed her coffee.

A few days later she said that Belle told her she never, ever wanted to ride with me again.