It’s kind of funny how some stories never leave your mind. I have a story that I would like to share, and the reason I want to share it is a little like Schrödinger’s cat – if it is not told, it may as well never have happened.
It is a story of love turned into an obsession when one loses the other. This story is quite different, as it passes through two very interesting and savage periods of history involving some newsworthy characters and events, and what’s more, it is true.
For many years in my younger days, I ran a paragliding school in France. I was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. I was involved in the neophyte stages of the sport; I was part of the early days. Paragliding began to gain popularity in the mid-eighties. They made some design leaps, and suddenly the fabric flying machines could actually glide rather than simply flying in a downward direction. You could use rising air and float above the hill you took off from.
I was an avid hang glider pilot at university, and for a year or two, I taught hang gliding. Then paragliding came along, and I saw its potential and got involved. I flew in competitions and worked for a couple of manufacturers testing their wings, but mainly I worked in teaching.
I came to work in France, teaching advanced paragliding to English people. It was a vibrant scene – dealing with people and introducing them to advanced mountain flying and flying skills. Dealing with people was a bit of an eye-opener. I had students from every walk of life, from misfits using paragliding to gain some cool points to affluent yuppies. We were based about two hours from Geneva, which was the airport most people flew into.
Once a week, we had to drop students off and pick up more from Geneva Airport. One day, I had to do a drop-off at the airport with no one to pick up, as it was the end of our flying season. My team of instructors and chalet staff were due to drive back to the UK a couple of days later.
How We Met
So, my story starts here, on the drive back from Geneva. It was about 8 o’clock in the evening, and it was pouring down with rain. I was about midway between Geneva and our place in the Alps. I was passing through a town called Annecy and just going by the hospital.
The visibility was poor, and the windshield wipers struggled to keep my vision clear. They slapped back and forth in their dull, rhythmic beat. I was struggling to see through the windshield. It was dark, and the headlights and streetlights were blurring my vision as the random rays of light refracted off the floods of water on my windshield.
Then, suddenly, through the rain and lights, I saw a guy hitchhiking, so I stopped and picked him up. I was happy to have someone to practice my limited French with. We talked for 20 minutes or so in French, and he said that he was visiting his brother in the hospital I had picked him up in front of. He told me that his brother was dying of AIDS. He had apparently contracted it in North Africa. He said that his brother was extremely sick and was not expected to live much longer.
We drove on, and he told me about his life. He mentioned that he was an artist and had lived in Paris in the sixties. He proudly told me he considered himself one of the “Sixty-eighters,” a name the French gave to those proactive demonstrators in France during the sixties – the French equivalent of the flower power movement. They were anti-establishment, fed up with post-war politics, and now liberated with drugs and the pill, which meant sex, drugs, and free speech. It was a time of great change and emancipation; the masses were speaking out.
He told me of evenings spent with the very famous (if you’re French) Serge Gainsbourg, drinking whisky. Gainsbourg was the archetypal French icon of saying “up yours” to the French establishment. He was a brilliant artist as well as a great singer-songwriter. François, the French hitchhiker, had spent evenings with Gainsbourg in the sixties in Paris. They had finished off a few bottles of whisky together. Later, Gainsbourg became a household name in France for his music and married the English actress Jane Birkin. François spoke lyrically about that time in Paris as a drug- and alcohol-enhanced renaissance. I could feel the energy of that era, and it almost felt like I was there.
Then I began to struggle a bit with the French language, and he switched to speaking English. The crazy thing was that when he spoke English, he did so with a perfect Irish accent. It was a bit strange to hear a French guy speak English with an Irish accent; he had obviously lived there for some time. He didn’t particularly like speaking English, even though he was very adept at it.
The Irish Girl
It turned out that he had met an Irish girl in Paris in the late sixties, during those charged days of change. He fell madly in love with her and moved to Ireland. She was from the Catholic side of Northern Ireland. He lived there for a number of years and was evidently very happy.
François told me about living in Northern Ireland during the Troubles – Troubles with a capital T. The IRA was trying to bomb the British out of Ireland.
After a number of years, his lady got pregnant. But he did not know one crucial fact: she was a member of the IRA. He knew her sympathies lay with the IRA, but he had absolutely no idea that she was active in its military wing. He was over the moon when they discovered she was pregnant.
One day, while she was planting a bomb, it went off a little too early, and his wife and unborn child were lost.
Listening to this story in the car on that stormy night was surreal. By this time, we had reached François’ hometown, Faverges, and it was time to drop him off. He said he had a little wine in his art studio, and funnily enough, I had a joint or two in my pocket. We decided to go inside his studio to hang out and chat.
We climbed out of the car, and he opened the door to his house and then to his art studio. I stopped and looked around. There was a room full of many paintings – forty or fifty – all of the same woman. I can remember it now as if I were looking at them this very moment. The woman had green eyes, dark, straight, shoulder-length hair, and an auburn complexion. She was, of course, his lady.
Each painting captured a scene they had shared. Some had a Parisian backdrop like a French café, while others hinted at Irish décor. I walked around, staring at each one individually. Her eyes seemed to follow me, and her smile was soft and becoming. It was as if I knew her – the paintings seemed to encapsulate her and gave her a lifelike quality. Some of the stories he told me about her had their accolade in the paintings. It was breathtaking.
So we sat down, smoked a few spliffs, and drank some red wine. He talked about the stories behind each painting – quite a few of them he had painted from memory. We talked about our lives. He told me more about his brother with AIDS and how he had contracted it from a bad blood transfusion while working in some medical organization in North Africa – Algiers, I think. We spent a few hours talking, drinking, and smoking. He told me about his life in this little town, and I got the impression that he was fairly isolated. He had returned to his hometown after leaving Ireland. He said he couldn’t relate to anyone around him – not too surprising after everything he had been through.
Reality Set In
He would paint – mostly of his lost love – but he was trying to get it together and make something of himself in the art world. He was technically brilliant. It was getting late, and I had to drive home, another hour away. I knew I shouldn’t consume any more and drive. It felt like leaving someone I had known for years. Reality set in – I knew that in two days, I had a 14-hour drive back to the UK with my team. So we bid our farewells, I gave him my number, and I left.
The next day was cleanup time in the chalet. All day, we cleared the space where we had accommodated our clients to return it to the owners so they would rent it out to us again next summer. That night, we all drank copious amounts of alcohol, as it was the last night. I was sharing my story about the lovesick hitchhiker when the phone rang – it was François. He asked if I wanted to have a beer and pizza with him. He wanted to hang out because his brother had just died.
Wow, this was strange – why me? I hardly knew the guy. I had to tell him that I couldn’t make it because I was too inebriated to drive. I promised him that I would see him as soon as I was back in France in a month or two.
Some months passed, and I was back in France again. I passed through François’ town a few times, but he was never there. Then, a few weeks later, I picked up another hitchhiker who needed a ride to the same town. I described François and mentioned his name. The young lad said, yes, he knew him – he was a well-known character in the village, and he had hung himself the day before.
“Fuck,” I thought. He called me – why me? I guess I was the right person at the right time for him. But, you know, it felt like I really knew him. Maybe his story moved me that much, or maybe we met in another life – I don’t know.
Life can be a bitch.