Two Sides of Separatism.

Another little anecdote from my days before the mast.

During our three months spent cruising around the eastern seaboard of North America, we put into Quebec for four days. Times were tricky; Quebec Separatism was in the air. De Gaulle’s famous speech ‘Vive le Quebec, Vive le Quebec libre’ was apparently still ringing in the ears of the local populace. We knew that the Heights of Abraham had been the site of General Wolfe’s most famous victory over the French, and we were conscious of the fact that we were representing the British armed forces. We were warned to be careful, and told to be diplomatic.

It was June and the weather was glorious. Several of us took the easier way up the Heights of Abraham than our forebears had taken two hundred years earlier. The cable car was a little quicker and a lot easier on the legs. We made for the Old Town, and settled at an outdoor cafe table in the shadow of the Chateau Frontenac. The waitress remarked to me that she wondered how my diet of ice cream and beer didn’t make me sick. She said I must have an iron constitution. I remained diplomatic and resisted the urge to say ‘Well, we British do, you know.’

We sauntered down to the city centre, where I went into a large department store to check out the fishing tackle. I made an enquiry of a young male sales assistant. He looked at me coldly and said, in perfect English, ‘I’m sorry sir, I don’t speak English. Do you speak French?’

At that point I could have got really snotty and said ‘No I don’t, and neither do you. The French speak French. You speak Canadian French, which isn’t the same thing.’ It would have been churlish, wouldn’t it? And not diplomatic... and not entirely true... and I would have been hard pressed indeed to think of an example to justify my statement, had I been challenged. I restricted my reply to ‘No’ and walked out. I’m not sure who won that one.

The third test came late one night. We’d been told of a drinking den somewhere in the Old Town, and wanted to give it a try. The problem was that we’d been told it was necessary to speak French in order to be allowed in. We discussed our relative linguistic merits and it was decided – by the others – that, as bad as my schoolboy French was, it was probably the best we could manage. I was nominated to be spokesperson. I was nervous.

We arrived at a heavy wooden door in an ancient back alley of the old quarter. It was one of those solid, intractable sorts of doors that hurt your knuckles when you knock on them, and it had a small opening at the top with vertical iron bars set into it. Being in a dark back street of a hostile town was already a little intimidating; the door only served to emphasise the fact. We knocked anyway, and a panel behind the grill was slid across. The face of a pretty girl peered out. The others nudged me forward.

I should have been prepared, but I wasn’t. I should have consulted a dictionary in advance, so as to be ready with a translation of ‘May we come into your establishment please?’ I tried to do it off the top of my head, and failed miserably. The others were waiting anxiously for me to say something. There was one of those fevered, pregnant pauses like you get when somebody forgets their lines in a play. My brain stopped working. I went into instinct mode and murmured

‘La plume de ma tante est dans le jardin de mon oncle.’

Did everybody fall about laughing? No, they continued to wait anxiously. The young woman looked at me for a few seconds, and then smiled and said

‘OK. That’ll do. In you come.’