CLEMENCEAU, RENE AND CHAPEAUX DE CHINOIS
Low tide in Le Perthuis Breton, the straits
separating the Île de Ré from the southern Vendée coast.
Over-wintering Brant Geese, des Bernaches Cravants
graze in front of sparkling water. Soon they will migrate north to Scandinavia,
announcing the real arrival of spring.
At this early hour, and with the tourist season some weeks
away, the beach is all but deserted.
The view seawards has changed little since Georges
Clemenceau arranged a hundred years ago for his summer-house bed to be lifted
so that he could see, upon waking, beyond the Chinese ornaments on his desk and
across the water towards Saint Martin en Ré.
The house is now a tiny, well-frequented museum. The
sand-dune gardens which were designed by Clemenceau’s lifelong friend Claude
Monet, are just behind me when I see René.
René is forty metres away, between the dry sand, and the
lapping marée-basse waves.
The sun is a few degrees above the Longeville forest
acacias, not yet over the sea. There is a cool north-easterly. In this part of
the bay, we are sheltered from its cutting edge.
He is absorbed in his collecting, and does not see me until
I am a few steps away.
“La pêche est
bonne?”
I enquire.
He straightens up with a smile.
“Des chapeaux de Chinois” He says, tilting his white
bucket to me, and showing the handful of limpets he has amassed.
We shake hands, and I ask how he eats them.
“Avec du pain
et du beurre. Comme çà, tout simplement »
He also explains that they are “encore meilleurs”
fried with garlic and parsley.
As is usual with such encounters, our conversation ambles
through René’s life-story. A potted history detailed enough to be engaging, yet
sufficiently succinct so as not to interfere with his morning’s gathering.
First, come the figures:
“I retired from farming nine years ago, when I was
fifty-eight. When I set up the farm, in 1971, I had thirty hectares and there
were thirty-six farmers in our commune. Now there are six. The neighbour
bought my land, and three of them grow sunflowers, wheat and maize on three
hundred ant thirty hectares. Some of my fellow agriculteurs made small
fortunes selling land for building. Especially the ones who were in cohorts with
le conseil municipal…”
He winks, puts his hand to his side and winces, then pulls
his threadbare green cap straighter. His complexion has the ruddy, weathered
hue of his Celtic forebears. It is an appearance characteristic of outdoorsmen
of Europe’s western seaboard, from Galicia to Ireland.
I ask him about the concrete ruins, which are visible in the
dunes.
“You mean La
Maison Rouge? Ah oui. The Germans built it at the same time as they
constructed Les Blockhaus.” He pronounces it “Blokoos”
“I was born not long after the war, and as children, we
would come to play here. It was, of course, forbidden. And very dangerous,
because of the unexploded munitions. We used to collect sand from in front of
the gun emplacements. There was still enough unburnt explosive mixed with it to
make a flash when we would throw it on the fire at home…”
René goes into a reverie. I wait. He looks down at his
limpet quarry, and winces again.
“I only eat them during the winter. Later in the year, when
the sun has been on them, the flesh is too tough”.
I look at the backs of his weathered hands.
“Until twenty years ago, when I came here here as I do now,
about every fortnight, after the big tides, I would find up to a dozen
octopuses along the shoreline. The porpoises would hunt them, and just eat the
heads. My wife used to prepare the tentacles using a Spanish recipe…Since she
died, I no longer have the appetite for that. And in any case, the commercial
fishermen now catch those calamars, even before the porpoises. The big
boats also make sure that the edible crabs no longer make it as far as the
rock-pools…
He thinks again.
“C’est
toujours ça. Les grands qui mangent les petits ».
It is not clear whether he is referring to porpoises,
fishermen or farmers. I don’t think it is important to ask him to explain.
I see that it is time to leave René to his labours, and to
his Sunday solitude. We shake hands, I thank him for the recipes and the
conversation. He smiles once more, and says in a low voice.:
“I have visited this beach since I was a boy. For reasons I
will not explain now, I know that I will not come here for much longer. If you
like oysters, I will give you a fisherman’s secret.”
I return his smile, and add a nod.
René picks up his bucket, and we walk for some minutes
between the weed-covered limestone rocks.
He stops, and points to the Île de Ré lighthouse, which is
just visible in the haze against the blue of the morning sky. Then he turns to
face the shore, and indicates one of the cottages next to the Mur de
L’Atlantique World War Two fortifications.
“There”, he says. “Twenty metres towards the sea, you will
find my secret oyster gathering-place. Come back in September or October, or in
any of the other winter months which have an “R” in them. Take a dozen or two
from the rocks. I promise that they will be the best you have eaten.
I bid René farewell, grateful for his gift, for this
morning, and hoping that we will meet again.
An hour later, after walking along René’s beach, past the
awakening holiday houses and the marina, I have bought an aromatic Sunday
baguette from La Boulangerie de Jard.
I celebrate the arrival of spring with six oysters and a
concave glass of crispy Muscadet in Le
Café Clemenceau. Viewed through the glass curves, and the straw-coloured wine,
the oysters become shapes reminiscent of
something Salvador Dali might have knocked together on his day off.
Above La Rue Nationale, I hear a characteristic cacophony of bird-calls. I look up to see a flight
of Bernaches Cravants , in perfect V-formation, heading towards Sweden.
