The sun set over the busy St. Malo street
allowing the shadows
of the dead time
to capture the memories of all who walked along the
cobbled pavements and to make the
haze of
childhood recollection seem infertile and bitterly cold.
The group of English, the ragtag of German, the abundance of French
badly spoken questions, bitter rivalries without the understanding
or the compassion needed to be better than they were.
The shouts and hails from vendors, a bull whip on offer,
money parted his wallet, fawned over by
many, the look of horror on the rest and
confiscated, not by a keen eyed
Customs
Officer, under paid, undervalued and with starched shirts that
gleamed in pride but were as creased as his sense of justice,
but by the teacher, angry, incensed, moustache
twitching like some comical war-time General
handing out an ultimatum of peace in their time.
The retreating of the sun, the splash of continental colour
it gave to the rooftops high on the mounted isle
reflected the teen-age angst, the devilry, the humour
of the age. Oh how we laughed
at what now seems so innocent but then
the creeping into a bar and watching the locals
bemoan the appearance of yet another
school from abroad, invading
their space, their time, the shadows of the day
in which they drank to the winter.
I watched, we scrutinized
in grim fascination and wondering if
the heroes of the hour in these men
would ever be seen again.
The shouts from street vendors became louder as we ducked
Out of the door and into the cold
outside
keeping an eye out for the twitching moustache,
a pair of eyeballs on each corner as we slipped back into the crowd
as two entertainers tossed batons aglow with
a raging fire which for a moment
ate into the shadows lair, causing it to turn and run back and
forth, back and forth, back and
forth
until a baton was dropped.
The fire lingering for a moment or two on the cobbled streets.
A cheer rang out from the younger crowd,
Booming, loud, destructive, but we were just lads.
Even the girls
joined in the mock applause, the sympathy of the gentler sex lost
as their independence had steadily grown from their week away
from home
We desperately counted out the Francs,
the small change
That was left between us, deciding on what to blow it on.
The option of hearing music from the crippled busker not even
mentioned. In the end the argument it caused made the moustache
look in our direction and the thought of a subdued trip
back to Cherbourg
gripped us enough to make us quiet and sullen.
I wondered what the French kids that we met
would have made of our small town
where the island we had was the one we made in our mind.
Where the nightlife meant not street jugglers and vendors calling out
to meet our rising excitement as if we were sailors on a day pass,
with a pocketful of shrapnel and a Queen’s Shilling
in which to sample the local lemonade,
but instead hoping for a day out in Oxford
a cycle ride that would stretch on and on through tiring
winding roads.
I have no doubt that their boredom
would have caused the finely combed and proper moustache to
droop in
exasperation.
Ian D. Hall 2013.