“Lorraine, on vous attend!” said a perplexed voice over the telephone.
Getting an invitation mixed up at any time is bad enough, but this was Christmas Eve, a mammoth social faux pas. We’d assumed the invitation to a neighbour’s home was for lunch on the 25th. Not so. The French celebrate on Christmas Eve.
A quick bath, a change of clothes and we were running by torchlight along a dark country lane.
As we arrived fourteen pairs of eyes turned in our direction. A chorus of bon soir reminded us that French would be the only language spoken; taking a deep breath we went to join the throng. Making small talk didn’t follow the usual pattern. Our accents were so dreadful; much of what we said was incomprehensible. Françoise, our hostess, was kept busy translating our errors; we panicked each time she left the room.
Gradually the apéritifs relaxed us. There was an enormous fire burning in the grate, a beautifully decorated tree, and the natives were friendly. All was well with the world.
When we were called to the table Derek and I were relieved to find that we were seated side by side and Françoise had positioned herself opposite. Linguistic help was on hand.
But relief turned to horror as I looked down at my plate. There, gleaming palely in the candlelight, were a dozen oysters. Neither Derek nor I had ever attempted oysters before, preferring our seafood cooked. Cautiously I glanced around to see how they should be handled. It appeared that loosening the flesh with a sharp knife followed a quick squirt of lemon juice, and then the shell was lifted to tip the contents down the throat. How difficult could that be? I forced myself to swallow a portion of lemon-tinged seawater-flavoured slime. One down, eleven to go.
I decided to skip the lemon juice part of the proceedings and get the awful business over as quickly as possible. Knife, tip, and swallow. Knife, tip, swallow, I was doing well until Françoise saw that I was omitting the lemon juice. “Vous devez employer le jus de citron. C'est la seule manière de s'assurer que l'huître est encore vivante,” she exclaimed. Surely I had translated incorrectly? She couldn’t possibly have said that the lemon juice was necessary to show that the oyster was still living. I squirted some juice and sure enough the creatures on my plate shuddered. So did I. “You have to be careful, some of them may be dead.” I’d been hoping that they all were.
A procession of courses followed until the oysters were merely a dim and distant memory. Three different types of pâté, fish, sorbet and fillet of beef, each dish accompanied by a superb selection of wines, left us feeling contented and more than a little merry. Our accents improved, and our vocabulary grew in direct proportion to the quantity of wine consumed.
Jacques, our host, was determined to keep everyone in the festive mood. At one stage he tasted his wine, decided it wasn’t to his liking and threw the glass over his shoulder into the fireplace. “Ne buvez pas,” he ordered. Not sure if we too should start smashing the glassware we waited to see if anyone else followed suit. Françoise left the table and quietly provided everyone with clean glasses. Crisis over.
Shortly before midnight one of the guests threw a log on to the fire and the daughter of the house burst into tears. Convinced that Father Christmas was going to burn, she was inconsolable until someone shouted that they could hear reindeer. Everyone rushed outside into the night air, craning necks to search the sky. We stayed that way for several minutes, so well anaesthetised by the quantity of alcohol consumed that the cold was unimportant. On returning to the house we found that Père Noël had taken advantage of our absence to deliver his presents.
By one o’clock everything had been opened and exclaimed over. Derek and I thought that it was time to leave but it appeared that we hadn’t yet finished our meal. We still had the cheese course to consume, plus the special wine that Jacques had decided should accompany it. By half past two we were no longer making any attempt to speak French, our brains being wreathed in alcohol fumes, but it didn’t matter a jot – all the other guests were trying out their English phrases. Where is the station? vied with ‘allo, and ‘ow are you?
We finally left at three o’clock, having just consumed dessert. It had been an incredible evening and a wonderful welcome to the French way of life.
We looked forward to celebrating the New Year in a similar style. At least we did until the first course arrived. Pass the lemon please.
© Lorraine Mace 2003
