Remembering The Treport

It was a two-hour drive from Amiens to the English channel. Not that any British would actually go there. I met British tourists when I went to Calais, but never in Le Treport. It was a cheap resort, a very lower working-class (ouvrier) sort of resort. Mme. Mareschal had introduced me to it. It was only ten dollars a night for a tiny room on the side opposite the water — with a bathroom down the hall, of course.

I remember that outside the front of the hotel there were several ragamuffins selling a liter of mussels for 10 francs — between $2.50 – $3.00 back then.  I tried to talk to them. That first time, Mme. M. dragged me away from them. But even when I returned on my own, the children never answered my questions. How come they all sold mussels for the same price? Had they reached an agreement? Why did they sell fresh mussel to the tourists outside the hotel? They would not be fresh after tourists bought them, to take back home. And none of the little rooms in the ramshackle hotel had cooking privileges, even hot plates.

Once at the weekend, when I came alone, there was a tiny circus of one ring in a little tent in the municipal parking lot, which served as the marketplace on Saturdays. On that Friday night I was excited to be away some school. Sometimes, on Friday night, it felt good to go to the movies. That night, going to the circus felt like a fine thing to do. They featured a handsome elephant-trainer on their posters. He was an African-American, and yes — they said he came all the way from America. I doubt there were many other native speakers of English present. For I was absolutely the only one stifling laughter when the elephant trainer whipped his star and called him “big f#cker.”

In Calais, the old men in a café told me how back in the 1920’s, when the tango had been illegal in Great Britain, everyone took the ferry to Calais to enjoy the “dirty dancing.” On my visit to Calais I met one British woman, senior but diminutive yelling (in a pastry shop) that she wanted a “cheesecake.” Me, I was not surprised when the French patronne told me she had nothing of the sort — it was simply a British specialty and not a French one. If would enjoy more of my adventures in France, check my Facebook personal page https://www.facebook.com/estelle.goldstein