With the lady on the lake

Our summer afternoon in the vast grounds of the Château de Versailles is unforgettable and I'm glad of it. This piece (I first wrote in August) is my first for weeks, since trying to separate out what I was writing on my personal life -- partly in the hope that some of it may help others who suffer from manic-depression -- from the music became impossible a month ago. The career and the songs of Chrissie Hynde's band addressed my experience too directly for any pretence of objectivity. Since then, on July 12, I put an item in the Orchard called 'I truly needed some time to myself'. So I did, but that's another tale...

Now here's how I supposedly nearly drowned my daughter at Versailles. That's one way we might introduce the story in years to come since what helped save the day was Marianne's infectiously strong and comic imagination.
The day began under fine auspices, very hot without being unduly muggy. In the train from Paris to Versailles, I was using my iPod for the first time in so long that I superstitiously scrolled without looking, then pressed the button. It played me the first and title track from 'Music' by Madonna. A song simply called 'Music' seemed a very good place to start again and my heart danced out through increasingly leafy suburbs.
My ex-wife Catherine picked me up at the station and drove me to their home in a nearby town, where they have a balcony big enough for a lunch table under the trees. They had returned from Brittany a couple of days earlier and were due to leave for Crete the next morning. Marianne was proud of her contribution, perfect fried potatoes, the fish was deliciously fresh and for people only home for a couple of days, they gave me a lovely lunch.
After coffee, the Kid suggested we both do some shopping and then walk straight on down to the vast grounds of Versailles. They live near the corner where Marie-Antoinette had her quaint little farm, which is a long way from the Château. That's how I like it; the huge building up by the town is too much for me and I don't care for the two Trianon places that also draw the tourist crowds. I'm fond of lakes, though, even when it's the big artificial one at Versailles set into stone banks in the shape of a vast cross. The French way of doing things sometimes with water, hacking trees into square shapes and making gardens as unnatural as they can doesn't appeal to the Brit in me.
Ah, but there were the rowing boats. I'd forgotten about those until we arrived at the end of the cross where you can rent them. I asked the Kid whether she fancied it. She said yes, if it wasn't too pricey. At 10 euros for half an hour or 14 euros an hour, the Kid paid the four euros that helped us into this obvious trap. I rowed cheerfully away towards the middle of the cross and she relaxed back like a girl should, talking about bringing her boyfriend. Marianne went on so much that it was only when we tried the wobbly bit, swapping places, that I discovered she had never taken the oars before. She soon picked it up and I told her how they're supposed to enter the water, using the "do as I say, not as do it myself" principle. We made steady if at first erratic progress towards the centre of the cross, until she decided it was my turn again. Once I resumed rowing, she observed that a lot of other boats were heading in the opposite direction, back to the quay.
I glanced up at the sky, which had become cloudy but didn't look unduly grey or threatening. We were in no rush. So I got to the middle. It was around the time I turned right to head down that arm of the cross that we felt the first drops of rain. Even then, they didn't bother me. I even relished the prospect of a light shower in that heat. The bit of the cross we were in is where plenty of ducks hang out and I wanted to get down their way, but a light shower was not what we got. Raindrops started to thud on the little boat and us and the sky overhead was suddenly very dark, though I could still see plenty of patches of blue elsewhere. In just moments, the heavens started to unleash everything.
It was a downpour, then a storm. It was all so fast that until far too late I tried to convince an increasingly dubious Kid of the virtues of getting one's money's worth, but I was far from convinced myself. It was suddenly an awfully long way back to the quay, we were soaked to the bone and the wind that came up to drive the sheets of rain over us was a chilly one. The lake got choppy, our light clothes were clammy and cold, and I think both of us had a strange feeling that we were somewhere very different from a tourist-crowded park renowned for a long gone French monarchy that had lost its heads.

Marianne began to freak out and I managed a true story about being in a similar storm in India and being cheered for it from the shelter of doorways by wiser local residents. I threw in a completely irrelevant quote from Kipling and reminded her that she had lots of English blood. But she was getting pretty scared. I began to feel increasingly nervous too, trying not to show it, because rowing became unexpectedly hard. I found it tough to pull in the direction I wanted and was at a loss to know where to go. We also feared for my iPod and portable phone, both attached to my belt and getting as soaked as everything else. Marianne offered to stow them somewhere relatively dry, but there didn't seem to be anywhere. We only had small bags and she produced the plastic one containing two books we had got her and Katie Melua's 'Piece by Piece' for me, which was my month's album by a woman singer. It was a kind suggestion, but neither asking Marianne to move nor letting go of the oars seemed a good idea.
In the end, I did the same as the ducks and headed for the shore. It wasn't easy and my struggling efforts annoyed three birds who had to vacate a refuge they had chosen and swim away to find somewhere else before I reached their spot. There had been absolutely nobody in sight for ages. I looked at the forest surrounding the water, but realised that if even we got to it we'd still be drenched and cold, while I had nowhere to tie up the boat. It also occurred to me to leap out and grab the painter, to tow the thing back along the shore to where we'd found it, but that idea was absurd as soon as I had it.
There was no choice. Somehow I was going to have to get the boat out again and back round to the quay. Marianne later told me there were waves quite big enough to frighten her. I scarcely noticed them, being too busy trying to row against a strong wind and a surprisingly powerful undertow. The Kid treated me in the meantime to a grisly series of stories and all her thoughts on death by drowning.
I managed to get the boat where I wanted it, heading back down the part of the cross where we had started. Now the wind was with me and when I told Marianne as much, she became more relaxed. We both began to feel a lot better when the rain finally relented. I never knew you could find yourself so isolated and alarmed in what I'd have thought comparable to a tempest in a teacup, but the imagination works wonders. Rowing out, I had told Marianne that it was probably possible to touch the bottom, though it might be disgusting in light of stuff stupid people chuck in the water, but she has a tremendous collection of gruesome stories and horrible films she remembers and that was the day for them.
She was also extremely concerned about how stupid we looked, which she told me is immortalised on film. I believe she's right. I dared not turn for a long look, but I saw the Japanese tourists, the grins and the inevitable video camera. I don't think they will be reading this to send us the evidence, but Marianne produced her first smiles again a little before the rain stopped. She ordered me to head for the shore where a young man had come out on a bicycle. The Kid was cross about how she then looked in front of the fellow who had given us the boat, since she fancied him a bit, "even if he takes himself for Keanu Reeves." We were apparently a pair of "blaireaux", which how I learned that badgers can look bedraggled or idiotic and possibly both in one French expression. The sun came out again before I got the boat back to the quay, which both warmed and cheered us up completely.
When Marianne told me she had seen an éclair up over the Château, I knew she didn't mean chocolate, but there has been plenty of lightning lately across the Paris basin. Her meanest comment was that I'd never get the boat back within the hour and we would lose our deposit. I didn't quite believe her, but she subsequently said she measured the effect of this remark by watching "the speed of the scenery going past". Once I knew we would make it, I took revenge by telling her to dab off her mascara from more places than it had actually run. I know how to bring a rowing boat gently to dock, but felt inclined to do it differently, told Marianne to sit down, gave a last heave and thumped into the quay with a mixture of relief and elation.
We might as well have fallen in, we were so drenched, and of course everybody stared at us, because all of a sudden we saw people again. We didn't give a damn and the fright had soon become a part of the fun. The Kid was a sweetie once we got our deposit back and she offered to buy me a coffee, but sitting down anywhere would have been horribly uncomfortable. I told her that the idea had been a nice row in the sun followed by ice creams, which prompted her to have one, but maybe she was still a little perturbed. A lick or two into it, she said, "I wanted strawberry. So why did I ask for vanilla?"
"Take it back and change it."
While we trudged home, Marianne put a sodden arm round my shoulder and told me about a day she had fallen backwards into the fountain in the local shopping centre. That's fairly close to where she lives, but Paris isn't. I had no idea how I was going to travel, but this was to underestimate the power of her mother's hairdryer, which got me a bit less wet. The iPod was still working, thank goodness, but when I got home, I hadn't listened to much more of 'Music'. 'Nobody's Perfect,' Madonna was singing as I took off my squelching shoes. She's quite right, of course, but it doesn't stop people having perfect days.