I met a French woman in a youth hostel once. She was about thirty or so, and quite pretty, but her prettiness was compromised a little by acne. It didn’t seem to matter. What I found so attractive about her was that indefinable quality of Gallicness. It showed most in her body language and her accent. Her name was Helene.
She was at pains to insist on the correct pronunciation. ‘I’m not a Helen or an Elaine. I’m an Aylairn.’ And her English was pretty good, too. She asked me whether I had a partner. I explained that it was a difficult question to answer, since I lived with a woman but we’d agreed to separate once I’d found somewhere else to live. She wasn’t strictly either a girlfriend or an ex-girlfriend.
‘So why don’t you call ’er your future ex-girlfriend?’ asked Helene with a subtle and rather beguiling shrug.
Not bad for a non native speaker.
We both moved on in different directions the next day. Sometimes life's random encounters don’t quite work out, and the Entente Cordiale was ever fragile anyway.
No comments:
Post a Comment